At a recent Pajaro Valley Unified School District (PVUSD) Board meeting, The Tobera Project teamed with community members to state their shared claim for renewing the contract behind the district’s highly successful and transformative Ethnic Studies curriculum.
Twelve speakers gave powerful public testimonies urging the Board of Trustees to maintain the impactful pedagogy that has empowered a new generation of scholars, providing a sense of education, belonging, and inclusion.
At the September 13th board meeting the Community Responsive Education (CRE) contract was abruptly halted when trustee Kim De Serpa was swayed by two Jewish advocates who associated Dr. Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales with antisemitism.
Dr. Tintiangco-Cubales is the founder and director of the acclaimed CRE. They pressed that the final year of her three-year contract with PVUSD be sidelined. The implementation of CRE curriculum had successfully served the PVUSD community for two years without any problems to that point.
De Serpa’s false claims have never been substantiated, and Dr. Tintiangco-Cubales, a distinguished professor, is the foremost authority on delivering Ethnic Studies pedagogy to teachers, students, and administrators in the state. She has vehemently denied such outrageous allegations after De Serpa defamed her professional integrity.
De Serpa is currently running for District 2 Supervisor and is trying to curry favor with voters in the more upscale and affluent Aptos, La Selva Brach, and Rio Del Mar areas.
At the September 13th meeting, the other PVUSD board members sat on their hands while De Serpa and fellow board member Georgia Acosta ranted without any research or proof supporting De Serpa’s conjecture that Dr. Tintiangco-Cubales’s curriculum work was antisemitic. Thusly, the CRE contract was suspended. As a result, Watsonville is in the Heart has decided to suspend work with PVUSD until the CRE contract is given a fair and rigorous review by the board.
Since then, efforts to put the CRE contact on the board’s agenda have been nefariously stonewalled by De Serpa and Acosta in a political power play. The CRE contract needs 4 of 7 votes to pass. So far, it has garnered three votes as Trustee Oscar Soto sits on the fence. Potential backers are Daniel Dodge, Jr., Adam Scow, and Jennifer Holm. Against the contact are De Serpa, Acosta and Olivia Flores, a protege of Acosta. Flores has been noticeably silent on issue and unresponsive.
The Tobera Project would not have been initiated unless he took Ethnic Studies in College, said Roy Recio, founder of the Watsonville-based endeavor that honors and preserves the Filipino family histories of the Manong Generation of the Pajaro Valley.
“It’s egregious that some board members are putting their political aspirations and ideology ahead of students and teachers,” Recio said. “This is proof why we need Ethnic Studies more than ever.”
Currently, community members, students, parents, and teachers are galvanizing to persuade Soto to support the CRE contract renewal. He is the important swing vote that can bring the item forward to the agenda committee. He has voiced support for the Ethnic Studies initiative in the past. However, he is non-committal at this point. Dr. Tintiangco-Cubales is married to a descendant of the Manong Generation of Santa Cruz County.
