For the second time in two months The Deborah Project, a public interest law firm which asserts and defends the civil rights of Jews especially in educational settings, has had to file a lawsuit against a California public school district which refused to comply with California law and instead ignored requests to comply with both the California Public Records Act and the California Constitution, and turn over all the relevant disclosable public documents the public interest law firm requested.

      In early June The Deborah Project asked a Santa Clara County, California court to force the Mountain View-Los Altos Union School District (MVLA) to comply with the California Public Records Act (“CPRA”) and turn over all the relevant disclosable public documents the public interest law firm has requested.

      The law firm’s CPRA requests to MVLA seek information about the use of overtly antisemitic ethnic studies teaching materials, the use of which is forbidden by numerous California laws. In addition to its explicitly biased and discriminatory content, the promoters of the material used by MVLA have publicly urged that teachers using these teaching materials hide them and their use in the classroom from parents, the public, and school district supervisory employees who would put a stop to the materials’ illegal use.

      It is obvious MVLA has responsive documents as the ethnic studies consultancy with which MVLA contracted, Acosta Educational Partnership (“AEP”) was recently terminated in large part, according to media accounts, because it uses Samia Shoman, who works with AEP. Shoman was blasted by community members for having been a primary author of the antisemitic portions of the rejected early Model Ethnic Studies Curriculum, whose use in public schools is explicitly barred by California law. She is also an author of the hate-filled “TeachPalestine Toolkit” used by “liberated” ethnic studies promoters. Shoman was captured in a webinar photograph displaying a slide that reads “Zionists have no place in the classroom!”

      The documents sought in this case will enable parents and the public to see why MVLA awarded AEP a contract, who did the due diligence on that group, what materials were and are now being used in the ethnic studies teacher trainings and whether the tainted material was retained and is being used to teach ethnic studies to MVLA schoolchildren.

      The Deborah Project is committed to exposing and ending attacks on Israeli-Americans, and the use of incendiary antisemitic materials, in California public schools.

Please click the link to view the filed Petition.