California Governor Gavin Newsom passed AB 101

a law that requires high school students to take at least a semester-long Ethnic Studies course before graduation starting with the class of 2030. This law

a result of a decades-long fight by advocacy groups from multiple communities to amend shortcomings in the current high school humanities and social science curricula

did not come without controversy. I argue that the new legislation will affect Californian high school education from multiple levels. School districts need to negotiate conflicting interests from different domains regarding what to teach in five years

high schools need to find a way to fit in the new course in a usually already filled social science curriculum

and teachers will find themselves having to deal with organizational changes caused by the addition of a new course. Although a sample curriculum is provided by the state

the class isn’t standardized

and each school district needs to design its own curriculum without some extent of collaboration. I conducted high school student and teacher interviews and analyzed archival data such as news reports and existing curricula from different school districts. Through this

my search aims to understand how the implementation of an ethnic studies course can impact high school curricula in California—not to predict what will happen since we will see that in five years—and see how that impact can affect students

teachers

and the Californian education system.