Celebrating Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage

How do we celebrate Asian American and Pacific Islander heritage at SFUSD?

In SFUSD, we honor our AAPI communities each day. Many of our schools offer Asian language programs and clubs for AAPI communities. In fall 2021, Leola M. Havard Early Education School opened the first dual-language Samoan immersion program in the mainland U.S. SFUSD also has employee affinity groups such as the Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (NHPI) Racial Affinity Administrators Group and Kabayan for Filipino/Filipino-American staff. 

Additionally, the SFUSD Fa’aSāmoa Initiative (FASI) helps address the academic disparities amongst Samoan/Pacific Islander students. FASI stems from a 2018 HAPI Resolution passed by the SFUSD Board of Education and amended in September 2020 In Support of Equitable Services and Staff for Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Students.

SFUSD has long been a leader in teaching Ethnic Studies in high schools. Ethnic Studies classes have screened Chinatown Rising, which discusses Asian American youth activism and SF history from the 1970s to the present day. Classes have used this as a text to encourage students to think about contemporary change-making movements. Numerous Ethnic Studies student podcasts have centered around Asian American identity, model minority myths, and countering Asian American hate in society. 

Now in its third year, the Filipinx Student Wellness Internship creates an empowering mental health educational space for SFUSD Filipinx students to develop skill sets to have agency over their mental wellbeing. They wrapped up their second Filipinx Wellness Conference at San Francisco State University, where interns presented mini-workshops related to mental health wellbeing.

Asian American Trailblazers in Civil Rights

View a recording of an in-person Teachers Workshop featuring Principal Liana Szeto of Alice Fong Yu Alternative School. The workshop highlights Asian American pioneers and the pivotal court cases that changed the landscape of U.S. civil rights, including the U.S. Supreme Court decision in United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898) that established the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship for all. 

This page was last updated on August 1, 2023