ALAMEDA — The Alameda Unified School District plans to cut ties with a remote learning program after parents complained its curriculum included racist material.
In an Aug. 31 letter to Alameda Unified families, Superintendent Pasquale Scuder and Mialisa Bonta, school board president, described the content as “racist, sexist, homophobic, and otherwise inappropriate for our students, our school, and our community at large.”
Scuder and Bonta said they planned to ask district trustees to authorize the district to stop using the program at their Sept. 8 meeting.
According to an online petition, Acellus lessons teach about economic justifications for slavery, equate Harriet Tubman’s escape to freedom to a burglar and show dolls talking about being “woman-hating.”
Scuder and Bonta said they are investigating two alternative remote learning platforms that could be used instead of Acelllus going forward, and that they estimate it will take up to 14 days to train teachers, provide information to families and implement a new program.
“We understand that a natural question at this juncture is ‘How did this happen?’ ” the district officials said. “There are a number of factors that contributed to our selection of Acellus for the Remote Learning Program early this summer, including the fact that we have been using that platform for some supplemental content and high school credit recovery for seven years and no concerns had been raised.”
As of Thursday afternoon, 776 people had signed the online petition demanding the district stop using the Acellus program.
The petition also noted the Alameda school district has been in contact with Acellus and that the company has taken down lessons that have been tagged as racist or as having sexist or violent content; revised each tagged lesson to reflect current attitudes and usage; and that the company is committed to reviewing all courses to ensure its material reflects present-day attitudes and norms.
The Chico school district recently dropped the Acellus curriculum because of complaints about the content from parents, according to the Chico Enterprise-Record.
According to its website, Acellus was created by the International Academy of Science, a nonprofit, in 2001 and that it has since been adopted by thousands of schools across the country.
A representative from Acellus was not immediately for comment.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
