Quick Take
Pajaro Valley Unified School District’s proposed “controversial issues” policy pretends to protect balance, but instead threatens to silence teachers and sanitize truth, writes the Pajaro Valley Teachers Federation. By demanding teacher neutrality and forcing teachers to ask permission before they can discuss tough topics, the district is engaged in censorship, they write. California law already guards against bias, and they believe the proposed policy changes are overreach. They demand the district’s board of trustees reject them in a vote set for Wednesday.
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There are moments in a community’s life when silence is not neutral. It is a decision.
This is one of those moments in Pajaro Valley Unified School District (PVUSD).
Our board of trustees is preparing to approve revisions to Policy 6144 – the so-called “controversial issues” policy. The language sounds harmless, even reasonable: Teachers should be “neutral,” administrators may decide what is “appropriate,” and teachers should stick to the curriculum and defer to the superintendent when discussing controversial issues.
But beneath those words lives something older and far more dangerous – fear disguised as order.
We have been teachers long enough to know what happens when fear begins to write the lesson plan.
It starts quietly.
A student asks why the strawberry fields beside their school are sprayed while children play nearby. Another wants to talk about the rent crisis that is forcing their family into a motel. A senior writes a speech about farmworkers’ rights, and the teacher wonders if that’s “too political.” An ethnic studies class reads a book about queer identity, and someone demands a warning label.
Soon, the classroom, that small miracle of democracy, becomes a place where courage is replaced by caution. Where students learn that truth must ask permission before it speaks.
We represent more than 1,000 TK-12 teachers and early childhood educators in PVUSD and believe the proposed policy gives the superintendent or designee unchecked power to determine what can be said, what can be taught and who may speak to our students. It demands that teachers “consult” before addressing controversial topics. It allows the district to forbid us from sharing our personal views and experiences with our students, without permission. It tells us, in effect, that our judgment – the very thing that makes us professionals – cannot be trusted.
That is not neutrality. That is censorship dressed in administrative clothing.
If this policy passes, a teacher could need permission to discuss climate change, immigration, policing or labor rights. A science teacher might think twice before inviting an environmental health expert. An English teacher might skip a book with queer or trans characters rather than risk complaint.
And a civics teacher might teach civic silence instead of civic voice.
The district may claim these revisions bring “balance.” But there is nothing balanced about fear.
California law already protects students from bias. It already requires teachers to present issues factually and with respect. What this policy adds is control: the power of a superintendent’s office to decide which truths are safe enough for children to hear.
Worse, the revisions misstate the law. They claim that parents can opt their children out of “LGBTQ+ content,” as if inclusion were a threat. But the FAIR Education Act requires exactly that inclusion – the accurate portrayal of LGBTQ+ people, people with disabilities, and communities of color in our history and curriculum. There is no opt-out for equality.
Combining LGBTQ+ lessons with sexual-health opt-outs is not a small mistake; it is a return to an old pattern. It is the same logic once used to keep books about Black life off shelves, to erase labor struggles from textbooks, to declare that certain truths were “too controversial” for the classroom.
Each generation rediscovers this temptation: to protect children not from harm, but from honesty.
The irony is that PVUSD teachers have always modeled what democracy requires — not agreement, but dialogue. We teach students to weigh evidence, to listen to perspectives that unsettle them, to separate fact from falsehood. In doing so, we help them become citizens, not subjects.
To silence that work is to betray the very mission of public education. Our district keeps preaching communication, but this policy is about control. When you tell educators they have to clear their lessons through the superintendent, you’re not promoting dialogue — you’re silencing it. We trust our teachers. We trust our students. It’s time the district learned to do the same.
We call on the school board to reject this policy and to leave the safeguards that currently exist in place.
James Baldwin writes, “The purpose of education is to create in a person the ability to look at the world for himself, to make his own decisions.”
He warns that such independence is dangerous to those who need obedience more than truth. We are living his warning now.
If board members approve these changes, they will not protect our students; they will only protect the district from discomfort. They will turn teachers into clerks of permission slips. And they will teach our children a lesson they will never unlearn – that the safest thing to do with truth is to hide it.
We ask our trustees to reject these revisions and to stand instead for academic freedom, teacher professionalism and honest education. Let our classrooms remain places where students learn to speak, to question and to think – not places where silence becomes school policy.
Because if we teach fear, we will inherit it. If we teach freedom, we just might save ourselves.
The Pajaro Valley Federation of Teachers has been advocating for our students’ learning conditions since 1969. We represent more than 1,000 educators in Pajaro Valley Unified School District, including TK-12 teachers and early childhood educators, migrant seasonal educators, counselors, nurses, psychologists, speech-language pathologists, program specialists, migrant education teachers, athletic directors and activities directors.