RioSlum Studio

Updated – June 22, 2023

Beginning next school year, California’s Santa Barbara Unified School District will make “healing and affirmation” for black students “as accessible as school lunch.”

According to The College Fix, this initiative comes from the UC Santa Barbara Healing Space clinic, who “provides a therapy space to address racial trauma and foster resilience for black students and residents.”

Santa Barbara School Board’s website reads:

“The collective toll of racism on Black Americans in the US is widespread. This ranges from police brutality to mass incarceration to the school-to-prison pipeline and in today’s world, ongoing discrimination in the US healthcare system related to COVID-19.”

Alison Cerezo, the UCSB faculty advisor to Healing Space said, “We, of course, want to be available to families after a traumatic event has happened. But I also want our black clinicians to be able to experience black joy with clients, not just the processing of trauma.”

A Healing Space spokeswoman had this to say about the collaboration between SBUSD and the Healing Space:

“The partnership between the school district and the Healing Space goes hand in hand with the district’s long-term goals to address the normalized culture of racism brought to light earlier this year by its Anti-Blackness and Racial Climate Assessment.”

Following the summer of 2020, when Black Lives Matter protests were receiving worldwide attention, UCSB psychology students “asked the department to do more and do better,” Cerezo said. Healing Justice Santa Barbara and the Towbes Foundation approached the department to build a specialty clinic composed of black clinicians to offer therapy services to black clients in the area. Healing Justice then helped bridge the connection between Santa Barbara Unified and the clinic to expand its services to the district’s students and families.

Updated – March 9th, 2022

Santa Barbara Unified School District serves the city of Santa Barbara and Goleta and California. The district serves 14,335 students.

In August 2021, the Santa Barbara Unified School Board passed a resolution mandating all school employees to be vaccinated against COVID. Staff for the school district are expected to be vaccinated prior to the start of the school year or must undergo mandatory testing. The Board further voted to implement mandatory COVID-19 testing for all K-12 students. 

Soon after the vote, the governor, Gavin Newsom, mandated that all educational staff in California public schools submit proof of vaccination or undergo weekly COVID testing, beginning in the Fall 2021 Semester. 

The district’s school board has previously attracted headlines for its controversial votes. In June of 2020, the board met to declare a week in February as an annual, “Black Lives Matter in School Week.” In January of 2021, the school board voted to eliminate “D’s,” and “F’s” from student transcripts. 

Upon implementation, students will now receive an “incomplete” or a “no credit” instead of a failing grade. The policy was specifically tailored to benefit minority and low-income students that had been negatively impacted by virtual learning since the beginning of the COVID pandemic. 

In February 2022, documents were leaked that revealed the district’s adoption of a far-left, BLM-centered curriculum. Students are now taught the 13 Guiding Principles of BLM. Other materials for “LGBTQIA+ Month” include books on cross-dressing and girls who transition genders.