Quick Take
The vote by the Pajaro Valley Unified School District governing board came after months of activism by community members, students and teachers, who urged the board to renew a contract with the consultant, Community Responsive Education.
The Pajaro Valley Unified School District governing board voted unanimously Wednesday to renew a one-year contract with a controversial ethnic studies consultant and have the district’s superintendent issue an apology on the board’s behalf to the consulting firm’s founder.
The vote came after months of activism by community members, students and teachers, who urged the board to renew a contract with the consultant, Community Responsive Education (CRE).
The firm had previously worked with the district for two years, helping teachers and staff generate the district’s own ethnic studies curriculum. In September 2023, two former trustees and several community members accused the co-founder of CRE, Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales, of antisemitism. At the time, a majority of trustees voted to not renew CRE’s contract. The antisemitism concerns related to Tintiangco-Cubales’ involvement in a controversial 2019 model ethnic studies curriculum developed for the state.
Advocates said CRE helped create a unique program for PVUSD based on the community’s local history, which has increased student engagement. In voting Wednesday to renew CRE’s contract, several trustees said they support the work that CRE did and didn’t see anything antisemitic about Tintiangco-Cubales or the district’s ethnic studies curriculum.
Trustee Joy Flynn said she wished that her daughter had been at Aptos High School while ethnic studies courses were being taught because she thinks she would have benefited from the program. “I don’t want any other student to miss out,” said Flynn, about her approval of CRE.
On Wednesday, Trustee Gabe Medina also called for Superintendent Heather Contreras to issue an apology to Tintiangco-Cubales on behalf of the board. The board, which has seen five new trustees elected or appointed since the September 2023 vote, unanimously approved Medina’s motion for an apology. Contreras joined the district in May 2024, after the board’s September 2023 decision not to renew.
During the one-year contract, CRE will help school administrators understand ethnic studies in order to conduct professional development for new ethnic studies teachers and to ensure the program continues.
Tintiangco-Cubales told Lookout she thanks the community for their advocacy. “The community of Pajaro Valley made this happen!” she wrote via text. “They didn’t give up! I am eternally grateful for all they did. The community is Ethnic Studies! They put Ethnic Studies into praxis!”
Several vocal opponents of CRE and Tintiangco-Cubales, including some who spoke out against her at the September 2023 meeting, were at the Wednesday meeting to continue requesting that the district not renew the contract.
The Jewish Legislative Caucus and other groups argued that the 2019 model ethnic studies curriculum developed for the state included bias against Jews, and didn’t include “any meaningful discussion of antisemitism.” They also disagreed with the curriculum’s characterization of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In response, the state revised the model curriculum, and ethnic studies experts who drafted the original curriculum, including Tintiangco-Cubales, denounced the changes and asked to have their credits removed from the document.
Doug Kaplan, a former PVUSD trustee, told Lookout after the vote that he was disappointed the board renewed the contract. He said he’ll “live with it.”
“It’s time to move in a more positive direction,” he said. “We have reached out to the Museum of Tolerance, where it may be possible to bring a Mobile Museum of Tolerance to our community. I hope we can make things like that happen.”
Kaplan added that he congratulates ethnic studies teacher Bobby Pelz, who since September 2023 attended all but one meeting to advocate for CRE’s contract renewal.
“He deserves the victory,” said Kaplan.
Pelz told Lookout he feels relieved, and joked that he wasn’t sure what to do now at future board meetings if he no longer has to advocate for CRE.
“I’m very tired. I’m very happy,” he said. “I think after I sleep for a few days, then it will sink in that we did it. It’s something that I’m very proud of.”
The Watsonville High School teacher said he hopes that the board’s decision can help improve the community’s trust in the district board, and said he thinks it was an important step to also have it issue an apology to Tintiangco-Cubales.
“I still feel some contention between community members and the board,” he said. “But I feel a lot of effort from the board. They’re trying really hard, I think, to reach out much more than the old board did.”
Pelz said it was incredible for him to see how many of the district’s high school students came to board meetings to advocate for CRE. He’s also excited to now include this story of protest as an example in his classes.
“If you stand up for what you believe then you can make a difference,” he said. “You can make things better.”
In addition to approving the contract with CRE, the board also voted by a majority vote to approve a contract with one of the other two vendors for ethnic studies professional development.
Historian Ignacio Ornelas Rodriguez will provide training to teachers on local history they can include in their curriculum as part of a contract the board approved Wednesday. His work won’t be replacing what CRE will be providing.
The board also announced that it selected a new principal for Aptos High School for the upcoming academic year, after the controversial announcement of the departure of its current principal, Alison Hanks-Sloan. District officials say she resigned from her position, but teachers and her father dispute that claim, saying she did not want to leave her position. The board didn’t mention where Hanks-Sloan will be working after this year.
During the Wednesday meeting, the board announced it hired Lisa Lansdale to replace Hanks-Sloan as principal for Aptos High starting this upcoming school year.
During public comment, Aptos High parent Bill Eilfort told the board he was disappointed by the departure of Hanks-Sloan.
“This action appears to me, at best, to ignore the interests of the community,” he said. “And even if the replacement is perfectly acceptable, which I have no doubt she will be, it still does damage to a community to replace and remove, or reassign, such a good principal.”
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FOR THE RECORD: This story has been updated to add community reaction to Wednesday night’s vote and other detail from the PVUSD board meeting.
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