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San Diego legislators and others are calling for Gov. Gavin Newsom to sign a bill that would require ethnic studies for high school students, a bill that has sat on his desk for two weeks.

AB 331 was authored by Assemblyman Jose Medina, D-Riverside, and passed both chambers of the state Legislature at the end of August.

Starting in the 2024-25 school year, Riverside Unified School District students will be required to complete an ethnic studies class to graduate.

San Diegans have been wondering and worrying for months whether their children will attend a school that is still physically meeting in person or whether they will stay home to participate in the novelty of fully online primary and tertiary education. School boards and school districts all across the country made complicated decisions, often accompanied and assisted by a constant stream of feedback from their local communities.

California would become the first state to require that all high school students pass a one-semester ethnic studies course to graduate if Gov. Gavin Newsom signs a bill that the Legislature passed on Monday, the last day of the legislative session.

Every high school student in California would be required to take a course on the contributions of racial and ethnic groups that have been oppressed and exploited through U.S. history, under a bill now on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk.

One of the most devastating impacts of institutional racism is having the contributions of people of color largely written out of the nation’s history making it difficult for minority students to imagine their own potential for greatness.

Assemblymember Jose Medina (D-Riverside) has made it his goal to change this for minority students in California. Those efforts now appear poised for success.

SACRAMENTO — Aniyah Story, a junior at Oakland High School, says she’s always felt like an outsider reading textbooks about American history in class.

Sensing the timing is now right, the author of a bill that would require all students to take ethnic studies to graduate from high school is pressing Senate leaders to free up the bill and send it to Gov. Gavin Newsom for his signature before the end of August. The governor already has on his desk another bill that would make a course in ethnic studies a prerequisite for a California State University diploma.

A new bill in the California Legislature aims to make ethnic studies a graduation requirement for high school students in the state. The bill’s author Assemblyman Jose Medina says despite ethnic studies being established as an academic discipline more than 50 years ago, it has never been integrated into classrooms. Medina’s bill would require a full one-year course in ethnic studies for high school students.

The United States is in the midst of transformation. The murder of George Floyd at the hands of police launched our nation’s largest movement in recent memory. In the aftermath of protests, people of all racial and ethnic backgrounds are demanding change.