South Bay's Jeff Suzuki Leads Curriculum Reform In Home Town

LOS GATOS, CA — A local school district success story is now a chief architect of its transformation.

Amid the Black Lives Matter protests over the summer, Jeff Suzuki started a grassroots movement that aims to address systemic racism in his hometown of Los Gatos.

Suzuki’s group, the Los Gatos Anti-Racism Coalition, recognized the importance of history curriculum and began working with schools shortly after its inception.

The Los Gatos Union School District, with the input of Suzuki and fellow LGARC members, authored the Equity and Inclusivity Resolution, and the district passed the landmark measure on Feb. 25.

The irony that a former Raymond J. Fisher Middle School History Student of the Year became the leader behind an effort to reform a curriculum he mastered isn’t lost on the recent UC Berkeley graduate.

“The universe has a sense of humor here,” Suzuki told Patch.

Suzuki started the LGARC after a nonsanctioned July protest at Los Gatos High School in support of the Black Lives Matter movement that attracted a modest crowd of about 60.

The LGARC within a week or so had well over a hundred members on its Facebook page. It has since swelled to over 350.

The resolution emphasizes an active approach to promoting a more equitable society through education.

Suzuki is among many social justice activists who believe the anti-racism movement in the United States has embraced a passive approach, and that such half measures have led nowhere of consequence. He hopes other districts adopt similar measures to LGUSD’s most recently passed resolution, promising more proactivity in dealing with injustice.

“Racism is complex and integrated into civil society. It’s systemic.” Suzuki said.

“The white-washed version of the Civil Rights movement is often portrayed as a non-violent movement where people just marched in the streets peacefully, MLK gave a speech about having a dream, and then the US solved its racism."

“This leaves out the decades of vicious struggle and violence; civil rights supporters were lynched, gunned down in their homes, assassinated, and terrorized. And it's easy to point to the KKK for being the villain, but what of the large majority of whites that witnessed these atrocities and did nothing? Doing nothing enables systemic racism to continue down its bloody path unabated; this was true then, it is true now, and it will continue being true decades and centuries from now.”

And in his view, complex problems don’t lend themselves to easy answers.

“The average white liberal,” Suzuki said, “might be polite to people of color and try their very best not to be racist; they might even make a post or two on Instagram expressing their fondness of Martin Luther King, Jr.

“But, materially, this person is not an agent of change; to be one, this person has to be proactive about confronting the problems of their time. In other words, they have to be ‘anti-racist.’”

Suzuki drafted an anti-racist teaching philosophy that served as an important basis for the resolution the district passed.

The resolution endeavors to create an academic setting that teaches the mechanisms behind systemic racism and fosters an environment where students of all racial, ethnic, cultural, and economic backgrounds feel a sense of belonging.

“All of these are easier said than done,” Suzuki said.

“There is no specific reform that a board can pass that can address any of these; it will be a lengthy and difficult process re-evaluating the curriculum, philosophy of teaching within schools, and protecting victims to do this. The items we passed are merely the start of this effort.”

District Director of Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment, Arcia Dorosti, who worked with Suzuki to draft the resolution, said the district’s former star pupil’s dogged determination was a decisive factor in the measure’s passage.

“Incredibly important. He was the catalyst for it in a lot of ways,” Dorosti said.

“He pressed. He was relentless on the way he pushed me, the way he’s pushed the town of Los Gatos generally, the way he has organized the community around these issues and raised awareness on these issues for our community and beyond.”

Suzuki said he expects pushback but remains committed to the cause.

“I certainly anticipate hurdles,” he said, noting he specially asked that language be included in the resolution calling for a commitment to persevering through barriers, including unexpected ones.

“The change will be inconvenient, and the passage of this resolution is just the start, not the finish line,” Suzuki said.

Suzuki estimates he and other coalition members spent hundreds of hours researching and writing documents, collaborating with the history department, and organizing to pass the resolution.

He expected the board to approve it but with a lot more resistance.

“The biggest challenge was preparing a strong case for curriculum reform by writing detailed arguments and communicating those arguments with the history department.”

Suzuki spoke at the July rally advocating for the adoption of a curriculum that better illustrates the role of systemic racism in American history.

He articulated specific demands for curriculums that promote equity in speech that's been posted on YouTube.

Suzuki noted historical events conspicuously absent from the LGHS curriculum and at high schools throughout the country such as the Tulsa Massacre of 1921 and Rosewood Massacre of 1923, events in which hundreds were killed and thriving self-sufficient Black communities destroyed.

He cited teaching the role of the FBI's counterintelligence programs to infiltrate, undermine and criminalize leftist Black activist groups such as the Black Panthers as being integral to understanding systemic racism in our country.

Suzuki also advocated for the inclusion of black authors in literature to describe the Black experience, noting that their stories are told almost exclusively through the lens of white authors such as Mark Twain ("The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn"), Joseph Conrad ("Heart of Darkness") and Harper Lee ("To Kill a Mockingbird").

Suzuki said he and his LGARC colleagues had deliberated and worked through the challenges in the district’s curriculum and mobilized people to pledge their support for more than a year and a half a year, long before the grassroots movement formed, which he believes helped him articulate his views before the board. The result of this preparation was the relatively smooth passage of the resolution and the re-evaluation of the history curriculum.

It probably didn’t hurt that he was a known quantity.

“I think he carried a lot of clout with our history department because he went through our schools and he was History Student of the Year at Fisher Middle School,” Dorosti said.

It was clear Suzuki knew what he was talking about.

“I have a doctorate degree in educational leadership focusing on equity and social justice, and I still learned from him,” Dorosti said.

“Los Gatos is lucky to have citizens like Jeff Suzuki. He’s an amazing human being and I’m honored to call him my friend.”