RACIALIST DISTRACTIONS, SRVUSD DEMOGRAPHICS, AND NATIONAL MERIT SCHOLARSHIP SEMI-FINALISTS

 

SRVUSD remains hyper-focused on its racial divisions and its overtly racist "anti-racism" programs, rather than on bringing people together for what ought to be the common purpose of optimizing the teaching / learning knowledge and skills.  Too often, SRVUSD sidesteps reading, writing, 'rithmetic, and concentrates on racialism and radicalism instead.

Peruse the slides further below.  They were part of SRVUSD's "Equity Summer Institute 2022," conducted on July 13th.  A Stanford professor was brought in to provide a 60-minute keynote address, a 30-minute Q&A session, and a 30-minute book signing — a contracted 120 minutes in total, at a cost to the District's taxpayers of $5750.   

As is often the case here, a touchstone of the "Institute's" program was "PEOPLE OF COLOR."  [SRVUSD's adopted textbooks are schizophrenic on the subject of racial divisions.  An example, from the mistitled This Book Is Anti-Racist:  "... race is a part of our lives.... I prefer using Black biracial to describe my race...,” says the author.  But also (same book, in which every race but white is capitalized), race is just "a socially constructed term that divides folx [sic] up based on their skin color and physical characteristics."]  

In the same book, the author declares that “Being racist against white people is not a thing…. So, I can have a prejudice against white people....  In our society, REVERSE RACISM IS NOT REAL."

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An "Institute" slide (below) showed a large enrollment increase in SRVUSD "PEOPLE of COLOR" from 2000 to 2022, appearing to promote a need for special treatment of same.  But in the next slide, we learn that 42 out of every 65 "PEOPLE OF COLOR" students here are Asian-American.  SRVUSD administrators should recognize these kids — with hearty congratulations to them — noting that by far, they are the most academically successful students in the District!   Then, SRVUSD should do what it can to learn from them and their families.  

For starters, check the San Ramon Patch list of National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test semifinalists (high school juniors ranking among roughly the top 1% of all who take  PSAT/NMSQT) at Dougherty Valley HS (58) and California HS (12).  From the entire California list:  Danville's Monte Vista HS added another 10 and San Ramon Valley HS 3 more (a small step up for SRVHS, which had none last year).  
 
That's a remarkable 83 NMSQT semifinalists from just SRVUSD — out of 107 in the entire County — and the great majority with Asian surnames!  Somehow in SRVUSD, that dictates a need for overcoming dreaded "White Privilege," instead of looking into Asian-American student success, its components, and finding ways to expand that success even further.  And one slide below (presented by one of SRVUSD's assistant superintendents), begins to suggest that grading itself must be altered to accommodate differing levels of academic performance. 

In other words, it appears that SRVUSD is gradually turning its grading practices into yet another "Equity" maneuver.

This is a continuing, core problem in SRVUSD:  skewed priorities, e.g. ideological distractions and sidetracks such as (a) critical race theory (though they don't call it that) and (b) radical, heavy-duty "LGBTQ+" activism.