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Assemblyman Jose Medina, D-Riverside, chair of the Assembly Higher Education Committee, said he plans to hold a committee hearing about the proposal “so that we can look at it with more detail.” He said the proposal is worrying some community college leaders because of the uncertain impact it would have on the funding they receive. “This is a big change,” Medina said.

He also worried about Brown making his funding proposal part of the budget process rather than going through the normal legislative process. “By just putting it in the budget,” he said Brown is “circumventing the Legislature being able to fully discuss his ideas.”

California Assemblymember Jose Medina says that he would have introduced his latest bill regardless of who is in the White House, but the fact that Donald Trump is President “adds to the impetus” for doing it now.

The measure, known as AB 2772, would mandate that the roughly 1.7 million high school students throughout the state complete an ethnic studies course in order to graduate, just as they are required to study biology, geography and physical education. If the bill becomes law, the requirement will begin in the 2023-2024 school year.

“Without knowledge of other cultural experiences and the history of those ethnic and cultural groups,” says Medina, a Democrat from the Riverside area who previously worked as a teacher, “I don’t think you can call yourself an educated person.”