A Southern California school board has voted to approve a social studies curriculum for elementary students, resolving a dispute with Gov. Gavin Newsom over lesson plans that mentioned the state’s first openly gay elected public official.

The Temecula Valley Unified School District had previously voted to reject the curriculum in part because some board members were concerned the curriculum’s supplementary material mentioned Harvey Milk, the former San Francisco supervisor and gay rights advocate who was assassinated in 1978. Some board members also said parents had not been adequately consulted about the curriculum.

Rejecting the curriculum meant the district would have to use a textbook published in 2006. Those textbooks do not comply with a 2011 state law that requires schools to teach students about the historical contributions of gay, bisexual and transgender Americans. Newsom, a Democrat who has often sparred with Republicans in other states over banning books, threatened to fine the district $1.5 million if it didn’t approve the curriculum.

The board approved the curriculum during a special meeting late Friday night. They also instructed the district’s interim superintendent to review a portion of the curriculum that includes a discussion of gay rights and how same-sex marriage came to be legal in California.

The board recommended “substituting age appropriate curriculum” that complies with state and federal law but “is also consistent with the board’s commitment to exclude sexualized topics of instruction from elementary school grade levels.” Board President Joseph Komrosky said the vote was not in response to Newsom’s threat, but rather to avoid a lawsuit. “Gov. Newsom, I act independently and authoritatively from you.

I am a sovereign citizen in the United States of America,” Komrosky said during Friday’s meeting. “If we do not provide curriculum — I want everybody to hear this — we will literally be sued.” Newsom said Friday’s vote ensures “students will receive the basic materials needed to learn.” “But this vote lays bare the true motives of those who opposed this curriculum.

This has never been about parents’ rights. It’s not even about Harvey Milk — who appears nowhere in the textbook students receive,” Newsom said. “This is about extremists’ desire to control information and censor the materials used to teach our children.” Textbooks have become a flashpoint in U.S. politics ahead of the 2024 presidential election.

In Florida, state education officials revised Black history curriculum to comply with a law signed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is also running for president. The new curriculum includes teaching that people who were enslaved benefited by learning new skills. Kimberly Velez, the district’s interim superintendent, assured board members that staff would order the new curriculum on Monday and it would arrive in time for the start of school next month.

“I don’t believe that what has happened over the past few weeks was necessary,” board member Allison Barclay said. “I think we could have made this happen so much earlier. We could have been so much more ready for school to start. It’s a little unfortunate it had to go this far.”

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LOS ANGELES (AP) — Nearly 500 Los Angeles Unified School District employees were fired this week for refusing to comply with a mandate that they get vaccinated against COVID-19, while some 34,000 students have not yet been vaccinated as required.

The school board voted 7-0 in separate motions on Tuesday to terminate 496 employees, who make up less than 1% of the district’s approximately 73,000 workers.

Most of those fired had likely been on leave since mid-October when LAUSD staffers were to have received at least their first vaccine dose, the Los Angeles Daily News reported. Employees were required to receive their second dose by Nov. 15.

“Parting ways with individuals who choose not to be vaccinated is an extremely difficult, but necessary decision to ensure the safety of all in our school communities,” interim Superintendent Megan Reilly said in a statement. “We wish everyone the best in their future endeavors and encourage everyone to get vaccinated.”

Meanwhile, with thousands of students not yet complying with the mandate, there’s no longer enough time for kids who have not gotten their first shot to be fully inoculated by the Jan. 10 start of the second semester, the Los Angeles Times reported.

LAUSD is one of several large districts in California to adopt their own rules requiring students to get the COVID-19 vaccination, ahead of a statewide policy that will take effect after federal officials fully approve the immunizations by age group. The state policy, announced by Gov. Gavin Newsom in October, is not expected to go into place before July, but the precise date is still unknown.

Districts including San Diego Unified, Sacramento City Unified, Oakland and West Contra Costa are among those that have deadlines for student vaccine policies scheduled to take effect in early 2022. The policies vary according to district, with some allowing students to opt for weekly testing and others making the shot a requirement for in-person classes.

In Los Angeles, students who are not fully vaccinated — or exempt — will be forced into the district’s independent study program or will have to leave the Los Angeles public school system.

Shifting 34,000 students into independent study would be challenging because the program faces staffing shortages, according to the Times.

In a statement Wednesday, Los Angeles Unified said about 85% of the district’s approximately 600,000 students are in compliance with the mandate requiring those 12 and older to get their COVID-19 shots.

That percentage includes students who have received at least one vaccine dose, individuals with a medical exemption or those who qualify for conditional admission to the district, the Times reported. This last group include homeless or foster youths, students whose families are in the military and certain special education students.

Of the 496 employee dismissals, 418 were classified employees who are non-credentialed but critical staff that can include positions such as instructional aides, custodians, cafeteria workers and others.

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The tweets are at the center of a new crisis facing the scandal-plagued Board of Education, which has been sued, criticized and mocked over the past few months.

Board member Alison Collins was the focus of a heated public meeting Tuesday evening attended online by more than 1,000 people, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. Many callers demanded Collins step down, echoing calls by two board members and dozens of officials who have denounced the tweets as racist and anti-Asian. Mayor London Breed also joined the chorus, saying “our students and our API community deserve better.”

Collins told the meeting she wanted to again express her “sincere and heartfelt apologies.” In an earlier statement, she apologized for the hurt caused by the tweets, which critics have called a non-apology.

The posts resurfaced last week amid a surge of violence and harassment against Asian Americans in the San Francisco Bay Area and around the country. They are the latest embarrassment for San Francisco’s school board, which has prided itself on putting racial equity at the top of its agenda.

In the midst of the pandemic, the school board faced national criticism for a plan to rename 44 of its schools — including one named for Abraham Lincoln and another for Sen. Dianne Feinstein — that it said honored people with discriminatory legacies. The plan was subsequently put on hold after an avalanche of criticism saying the board should focus on reopening schools, which are still closed despite the city’s low transmission rates, rather than renaming them. The board also bowed to complaints that its process to select which schools should be renamed was flawed.

The city of San Francisco then took the dramatic step of suing the board and the school district to force the reopening of schools. Under a plan recently negotiated with its labor unions, San Francisco plans to phase-in the reopening of elementary school classrooms in mid-April.

The board has also faced criticism for a plan to end merit-based admissions to the city’s top public high school, Lowell, and use the same lottery-based system that admits students to other high schools.

Collins was a strong proponent of Lowell High School dropping its merit-based admissions process, which she called racist. About 55% of Lowell students are Asian, even though Asians make up just 8% of the city’s population. About 17% of students are white, 11% are Latino and just 2% are Black.

The 2016 tweets were made public by a group of parents who have started an effort to recall three of the board’s seven members, including Collins.

In the tweets, Collins, who is Black, wrote that she was looking to “combat anti-black racism in the Asian community at my daughters’ mostly Asian (American) school.”

Many Asian Americans, she wrote, “believe they benefit from the ‘model minority’ BS’” and “use white supremacist thinking to assimilate and ‘get ahead.‘”

Near the end of the thread, Collins called for Asian Americans to speak out against President Donald Trump’s policies, saying that her daughter stepped in to stop Asian American boys who were bullying a Latino student.

“Don’t Asian Americans know they are on his list as well?” Collins wrote, using asterisks in place of a racial slur. “Do they think they won’t be deported? profiled? beaten? Being a house n(asterisk)(asterisk)(asterisk)(asterisk)r is still being a n(asterisk)(asterisk)(asterisk)(asterisk)r. You’re still considered ‘the help.’”

The two school board members who have called on Collins to resign — Jenny Lam and Faauuga Moliga — are the board’s only Asian American or Pacific Islander members. The others have condemned the tweets but say they support a “restorative process.”

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