The Santa Ana Unified School District is the target of a transparency lawsuit contending its process for developing its radical Ethnic Studies curriculum violated state open meeting laws and was deliberately secretive in order to shield extremist voices from public scrutiny – especially when it came to issues of Israel and Palestinians. The law suit contends that process was rife with anti-Semitism and an anti-Israel bias.
The lawsuit will have its first court hearing this week on September 19.
One name that continually crops up in the legal filings is a SAUSD educator and Ethnic Studies Steering Committee member referred to as “Employee 1.”
According to deposition testimonies, texts and e-mails, Employee 1 was referred to as a “dictator” driving the Steering Committee in a radical direction. Internal SAUSD e-mails and texts describe Employee 1 as a “domineering” person who is a close friend and ally of SAUSD Board members Rigo Rodriguez and Carolyn Torres.
Rodriguez and Torres were both members of the Steering Committee. Rodriguez is a Chicano Studies professor at Cal State Long Beach and Torres is an Ethnic Studies Curriculum Specialist for the Anaheim Union High School District.
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit – the Anti-Defamation League, The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, the American Jewish Committee (AJC) and Covington and Burling – chose not to identify Employee 1 by name in the lawsuit. However, they do disclose that Employee 1 was a member of the state advisory committee that developed the 2019 draft Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum that was ultimately rejected after its radicalism provoked a political firestorm.
There is only one SAUSD Ethnic Studies Steering Committee member who also served on the state advisory committee: Roselinn Lee, a social studies teacher and Ethnic Studies curriculum specialist with the SAUSD.
The internal SAUSD e-mails and texts produced during discovery paint a portrait of a highly-political educator who stridently and unashamedly works to embed an ideological agenda into the district’s curriculum, and has no tolerance for those who are not on board with her goals.
In a September 13 text exchange with who is believed to be SAUSD Ethnic Studies teacher Mike Rodriguez, Linn attacks the only Jewish member of the Steering Committee, calling him “stupid” and “a fucking baby,” and dismissing him as a “pretender” with “a colonized Jewish mind.”
Rodriguez laughed at Linn’s “colonized Jewish mind” insult and said “I didn’t see eye to eye with him either.”
In a May 11, 2023 text change, Linn and Rodriguez gossip about Linn’s supposedly being excluded from a Steering Committee meeting with the Jewish Federation of Orange County. Linn tells Rodriguez “someone has to guide them or they will cave in to zionists.”
“The racist zionists,” Linn adds.
“We can’t cave,” asserts Rodriguez, likely referring to objections from Jewish community members to the extremist content of the “liberated” Ethnic Studies being advocated by Steering Committee members such as herself.
In a November 29, 2023 text exchange with “YL” – just seven after Hamas massacred 1,200 innocent Israelis in cold blood, up close and personal – Linn complains that another SAUSD educator or administrator (it’s not clear) asked her to send an e-mail to all the district’s history teachers “about the conflict and call Hamas terrorists.”
“But I refused,” Linn old YL.
One of the members of the SAUSD Ethnic Studies Steering Committee is Yuri Lara, an Ethnic Studies/English Language Arts teacher at Godinez Fundamental High School. Lara and Linn are longtime friends and colleagues who collaborated on developing SAUSD’s first Ethnic Studies curriculum.
The lawsuit references a text conversation between a Jewish member of the Steering Committee regarding comments the plaintiffs say were reportedly made by “Employee 1” (aka Linn). According to the chat, the comments were reportedly during preparation for a meeting with the Jewish Federation of Orange County, and include statements such as:
– “We don’t need to give both sides. We only support the oppressed, and Jews are the oppressors”
– “Jews greatly benefit from white privilege, so they have it better.”
– “Jews are not a disadvantaged ethnic group in the US because they were never slaves.”
The Jewish member of the Steering Committee said that when he “very respectfully said that those comments were personally offensive and racist,” another committee member told him to “check my tone” so as not to “ruin the spirit and mood of the room.”
Apparently, the “spirit and mood of the room” was anti-Semitic.
More to come.
