Santa Ana School District Agrees to Disband Anti-Semitic Ethnic Studies Courses

To settle a lawsuit filed by Jewish groups, the Santa Ana Unified School District last week agreed to disband its anti-Semitic ethnic studies courses that were secretly created in violation of California open meeting laws and concocted by school officials making crude anti-Jewish remarks.

The settlement was a remarkable victory for the Jewish organization and is being hailed as likely to provide a cautionary note to any school districts that would create similar ethnic studies classes.

Under the terms of the settlement, the District will stop teaching its Ethnic Studies World Geography, Ethnic Studies World Histories, and Ethnic Studies: Perspectives, Identities, and Social Justice classes.

Additionally, the settlement requires that the Israel-Palestine conflict be taught in a matter that is free of bias and deemed a “controversial topic” under California law that requires dispassionate teaching.

“Materials that, for example, teach, state, or imply that the Jewish people do not have a right to self-determination (e.g. by claiming the existence of a state of Israel is a racist endeavor) or teach, describe, or refer to double standards by requiring of Israel a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation shall not be used unless taught through an appropriate critical lens,” the settlement says.

Also under the settlement,  the District will stop using the services of the  Xicanx Institute for Teaching and Organizing (XITO, which Jewish groups aptly accused of peddling anti-Semitism. The woke consulting outfit had contributed to the Ethnic Studies courses that are now being disbanded.

And the District is going to reimburse the plaintiffs $43,091 in legal costs for things such as filing fees.

So the capitulation by the District is really quite staggering.

Marci Miller, a lawyer for the Brandeis Center, one of the plaintiffs, told the California Globe that, “We are very happy with the settlement. We think this will have widespread impact and send a message that ethnic studies cant be used to infuse the classroom with anti-Semitism and transparency is required by the law and what we showed in Santa Ana shows the importance of that.”

Miller said that one reason the District settled is that at a court hearing on the case in December,  the Jewish groups were able to show the judge that the curriculum was adopted in violation of the open meeting law, the Brown Act, and filled with bias that is prohibited by California law.

“I think they had to settle,” she said in a telephone interview. “The way the hearing went showed there were repeated Brown Act violations and the courses that came out of the ethnic studies curriculum should be invalid.”

The lawsuit was originally filed in California Superior Court in  September 2023 by the Brandeis Center, the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League.

It said that the District’s ethnic studies classes that were created by a secretive steering committee “include one-sided anti-Israel screeds and propaganda that teaches students–falsely–that Israel is an illegitimate ‘settle colonial’ ‘racist’ country that ‘stole’ land from a pre-existing country called Palestine and engages in unprovoked warfare against Palestinian Arabs.”

The lawsuit also said the curriculum was created by a secretive steering committee without proper input from the public in violation of the Brown Act.

“The public was deprived of its legal opportunity to address the contents of these courses before the Board approved them, because the Board failed to give the community the legally required opportunity to learn about the content and comment on it at public meetings of the Board,” the complaint said.

In September 2024, the Jewish groups filed an amended complaint with material uncovered through discovery that showed a litany of crude anti-Semitic remarks by members of the Ethnic Studies Steering Committee and a concerted attempt to keep the curriculum under wraps.

The amended complaint said that the Committee’s communications displayed “deeply troubling evidence of extreme bias and anti-Semitism.”

The communications are worth quoting in detail because they show just how much crude left-wing anti-Semitism had infested the School District.

“In text messages two senior SAUSD officials discussed scheduling ethnic studies course approvals by the full Board on a Jewish holiday so Jews could not attend and comment on the course content. One stated: on a good note…no public comment on ethnic studies. We may need to use Passover to get all new courses approved.” The other official responded “that’s actually a good strategy.”

“Senior members of the Steering Committee reportedly stated among other things, that ‘Jews are not a disadvantaged group in the U.S. because they were never slaves’ that ‘Jews greatly benefit from white privilege, so they have it better’ and ‘we don’t need to give both sides. We only support the oppressed and Jews are the oppressors.’”

But internally the crassest remarks  came from somebody the lawsuit identifies as “Employee 1. ” She took offense that the Jewish Federation of Orange County wanted input on the curriculum, calling the Jewish group “racist Zionists” to whom the District should not “cave.”

“She doubled down in her deposition on her view that the Jewish Federation are ‘racist Zionists,’” the complaint says.

And “In another exchange Employee 1 referred to the lone Jewish member of the Steering Committee as a “colonized Jewish mind” as well as a “pretender” a “fucking baby” and “stupid” because of his reservations about some of the Committee’s work.”

“Employee I” also said in a Committee meeting that “Jews have it better” and that it wasn’t necessary to provide “both sides” because “we only support the oppressed and Jews are the oppressors.”

The California Globe exclusively identified this hateful woman as Roselinn Lee, a curriculum specialist with the District.

Last September, then-California Congresswoman Michelle Steel told the California Globe that Lee should be fired for her remarks. But Lee does not appear to have been disciplined at all.

Despite the reams of anti-Semitism uncovered by the Jewish groups in the litigation the School District insisted in a statement that it is free of bias.

District Superintendent Jerry Almendarez said that, “At no time has the district supported the teaching of instructional content to students that reflects adversely on any group on the basis of religion, race, ethnicity, or national origin as alleged in the lawsuit.  The settlement of this lawsuit affirms that principle and resolves any misunderstanding that may have occurred.”