San Luis Obispo mother Sara McGrath ventured into two separate school districts to find her son an inclusive foundation for education.
McGrath’s son has Down syndrome. She first visited the neighboring Atascadero Unified School District when it was time for the then-4-year-old to enroll in preschool. But the tour ended sooner than expected when the family was shown only one of two classrooms with special education support. It was a moderate- to high-intensity class, and the school official told McGrath that the other classroom was much less intensive.
“I just felt at that point they were making assumptions on what my son was capable of based on his diagnosis of Down syndrome,” McGrath said on Sept. 23.
After moving to SLO, the family engaged in individualized education plan meetings with the San Luis Coastal Unified School District. Those discussions revealed the school district placed kids with special needs in small special education classrooms that focused on a concept called “learning to learn.” The phrase mystified McGrath.
“I felt that all 4-year-olds are learning to learn … and are going to be having their first experiences in classrooms with teachers,” she said. “It didn’t make a difference if your child had a diagnosis of some sort or not.”
Unsatisfied with the administration’s answers, McGrath simply enrolled her son in Pacheco Elementary School, which is noted for its dual immersion program. She felt he had a head start in a way because their family was already bilingual. It was only then that the school decided to bring in a program specialist to help her son.
“From the get-go, even with federal law on our side, a lot of parents face resistance for our children to be included in the neighborhood schools where they should be going because of this idea … that they need a specialized and different classroom,” McGrath said. “Sometimes, that specialized classroom is the most appropriate spot for a certain child, but the crux is that it shouldn’t be so hard to get what we were finally able to achieve for our son.”
McGrath’s search for diversity access is one undertaken by many parents of students with disabilities. So much so that it resonated in Sacramento thanks to State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond’s creation of a task force that monitors school textbook publishers for honest and better portrayals of California’s diverse population in curriculum.
At the first task force meeting on June 21, Kristin Wright from the Sacramento County Office of Education stressed the need to amplify disability as a celebrated identity in the state. She added that segregation of students with disabilities is a prevalent problem that reaches a disproportionate rate when it comes to students who are also from minority races and identities.
“We’re also in many cases teaching them in separate classrooms and also with a separate and less rigorous curriculum,” Wright said.
Thurmond’s task force arrives at a contentious time in California’s—and the county’s—educational history. This year, the school board of the Temecula Valley Unified School District voted to expel mentions of gay rights activist Harvey Milk from the social studies curriculum before reversing the decision when met with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s threat of a $1.5 million fine. The Temecula school district also hired former Paso Robles school district board President Chris Arend as an alleged critical race theory “expert,” for $15,000, to give presentations to teachers on the subject, according to the San Bernardino Sun.
According to previous New Times reporting, concerns about critical race theory and its conflation with social and emotional learning flooded the Paso Robles and Lucia Mar Unified school districts in the last couple of years. Over the past two years, Paso Robles High School has experienced multiple anti-LGBTQ incidents, including parents’ backlash against a Pride flag in a classroom. In March, two Paso Robles parents also filed oppositions to the district’s adoption of the latest edition of an AP Chemistry textbook because of its references to the United Nations global sustainability goals.
The state task force’s Co-Chair Sen. Monique Limón (D-Santa Barbara) told New Times that fiery deliberations about diversity improvement in school curriculum is a new happening.
“While this issue has become quite debated in the last couple of years, there really was a time when there was not much disagreement about wanting to have history that’s more reflective of a lot of students from different backgrounds,” she said.
A former member of the Santa Barbara County Education Office’s board of education, Limón has extensive experience in fostering diversity in the classroom. While a member of the state Assembly in 2017, she authored AB 738—a bill to create a Native American studies model for schools to integrate into their lessons plans.
Boosting accurate representation of the state’s diverse demographics must go beyond subjects like history and social studies, according to Limón. With more public hearings slated for 2024, she added that the task force wants to make sure that students are equipped with the tools to critically think about solutions when they try to solve problems.
“I see that even in science,” she said. “Water treatment, water issues, the way that people have dealt with scarcity in water, oftentimes it’s influenced by region, culture, and background perspectives. What we’re trying to do is deeper than just one subject at a school.”
Locally, the Paso Robles teachers union expressed support for the task force. But Executive Director Jim Lynett told New Times that while teachers wanted more diversity, Paso school board members Laurene McCoy, Dorian Baker, and Kenny Enney challenged the idea that textbooks are properly reviewed.
“They haven’t articulated this openly in school board meetings, but I assume what they’re saying is that the process to approve textbooks is not adequate,” he said. “They don’t feel that enough parents are involved even though parents are invited to review … on a regular basis. We have staff members, parents, community members who all have access to any proposed school textbook adoption.”
Lynett, a teacher of 40 years who sat on curriculum review committees, explained that most parents are busy and don’t have time to thoroughly flag textbooks for possible issues. They usually leave approval up to teachers committees, which in turn, recommends books for piloting in select classrooms. Those teachers piloting the textbooks then make recommendations on what’s working or if they need to try textbooks from another publisher.
“But what a lot of people are missing in this equation is that there is a standard list of textbooks provided by the state,” Lynett said. “You can’t just choose something out of the blue. The idea that we don’t have enough to choose from is bogus, in my opinion, because it’s been going on this way for as long as I can remember.”
That’s where state Superintendent Thurmond’s 10-member, all-Democrat task force comes in: to ensure improved diversity representation at the root list of textbooks. With CPM Educational Programs, Benchmark Education, College Board, and Studies Weekly present at the June 21 hearing, Thurmond complimented them, saying that some other publishing companies “are running away from this conversation” about diversity access.
Still, SLO parent McGrath wishes efforts to include more kids took place sooner in the education process.
“The thing about inclusion is that if kids’ special needs aren’t included from the very beginning, it is very hard to include them later on,” she said. “When kids are in that from the very beginning in an inclusive environment, and it’s represented in the classrooms and in textbooks, it all becomes normal and expected.” Δ
Reach Staff Writer Bulbul Rajagopal at brajagopal@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Autumn Arts Annual 2023.