The District indefinitely postponed a planned professional development (PD) day designed to teach an antisemitism training on Sept. 28. The training, required under a $325,000 lawsuit settlement, was halted after teachers who reviewed the training materials raised concerns about their content and format.
Under section 5.1.3 of the settlement, the District must provide mandatory antisemitism training that administrators must complete by Dec. 31 and a second mandatory session by June. 15 each school year. All teachers, coaches, long-term substitutes, and other classroom-based district employees who work directly with students must complete a one-hour antisemitism training session.
As part of the settlement, the Jewish Family and Children’s Services (JFCS) would facilitate the training. The JFCS offers more than 40 specialized programs, including the JFCS Holocaust Center, which provides specialized curriculum and educational programs targeted at schools and teachers, students and youth, and parents and clinicians. The District paid JFCS $41,000 to carry out the training. To accommodate the number of District employees required to participate, the JFCS planned to bring in-person teachers to lead the session.
The JFCS shared their slide deck with Superintendent Crystal Leach last Thursday. Leach then relayed the slide deck to a group of teachers who were asked to give feedback on the presentation before it was presented during the training day.
“There were some concerns raised by the teachers about, because it is such an emotional topic, the safety of doing that kind of turn and pair share when you’re in a big, huge group of 300 people,” Edith Salvatore, President of the Sequoia District Teachers Association (SDTA), said.
“One of the teachers put together a really comprehensive list of concerns, and a bunch of us were like, ‘Yeah, that’s how I was feeling,’ and just didn’t put the words together,” Salvatore said.
Teachers believed that some of the content included in the presentation had not been previously discussed. “There was content that showed up in the final slideshow that had not been in the materials that were reviewed previous to that,” she said.
Due to numerous concerns, Leach decided to postpone the training until further notice.
“In [Leach’s] words, she said, ‘I don’t want to do something right now that we’re not able to do right,’” Salvatore said. District staff then received a message informing them of the cancellation.
“Personally and on behalf of SDTA, we support the superintendent’s decision to postpone because it is important to get it right. If you look in your back catalog of articles, you will have reference to some implicit bias training that the District was doing a handful of years ago that was facilitated on Zoom with an anonymous Padlet that did not go well, and it did damage that people still feel to this day,” Salvatore said.
Leach, along with District attorneys, spent the day in the Performing Arts Center available to answer any questions or concerns about the postponement. Many staff members came to voice their opinions on how to handle the training in the future.
“Mostly everyone thinks, ‘hey, it would be better to do it at our school sites where we know each other, rather than being in a room with M-A and Sequoia staff who maybe don’t know each other,’” she said.
“The District is unsure when they will be able to hold the training this year,” Salvatore said.
