Santa Barbara’s DEI Disaster
By Greg Hammel
The U.S. Department of Education recently sent a pointed message to all school districts in the USA including Santa Barbara Unified School District (SBUSD) in the form of a “Dear Colleague” letter. Its core assertion was unambiguous: "Discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin is illegal and morally reprehensible.” The letter called for a return to the principles of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision—a world where individuals are judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin.
Yet, SBUSD’s leadership has chosen to double down on a divisive “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) agenda that has demonstrably failed its students.
The Federal Dept. of Education letter accused school districts that had implemented DEI like SBUSD of “toxically indoctrinat[ing] students with the false premise that the United States is built upon systemic and institutional racism.” This critique strikes at the heart of the DEI curriculum, which has injected racial stereotypes and explicit race-consciousness into training, programming, and even discipline.
Per the US Department of Education, the discriminatory practices of DEI will no longer be tolerated and will be legally dealt with via the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Far from fostering unity, DEI curriculum has deepened division and undermined academic performance.
At the SBUSD board meeting on February 25, 2025, several parents, including myself, read the “Dear Colleague” letter to the Board. Board President Gabe Escobedo dismissed the letter as a fear mongering tactic. "They want us to be afraid,” he declared, suggesting that calls for equity and justice are misconstrued as oppression by critics. Escobedo vowed to maintain the district’s DEI curriculum unchanged, framing it as a bulwark against oppressive institutions. But his rhetoric glosses over a troubling reality: SBUSD’s DEI experiment has not only failed to deliver on its promises but has actively harmed the students it claims to serve.
The district’s foray into DEI began in 2005, when it partnered with Just Communities Central Coast (JCCC), a local organization that had been paid over $1.7 million to implement one of the nation’s first DEI programs. Jarrod Schwartz, the group’s founding executive director, described the initiative as a response to “chronic and persistent achievement gaps” between Black and Latino students and their White and Asian-American peers. The solution, he argued, lay in addressing “institutional racism” through a revamped curriculum and school culture.
What followed was a seven-year experiment, from 2015 to 2022, rooted in the “oppressor vs. oppressed” framework—a model with deep ties to Marxist-inspired social justice movements.
Achievement Gap Unchanged with DEI Program
JCCC, an offshoot of the National Conference for Community and Justice (founded in 1927), embraced this binary lens: white versus people of color, male versus female, Christian versus other. The approach pits groups against one another without offering a clear endpoint to the supposed oppression, fostering perpetual grievance. In SBUSD, this translated into a curriculum that emphasized racial division over shared humanity. The results were predictable—and catastrophic.
By 2022, the achievement gap remained stubbornly intact. English and math test scores showed white students consistently outperforming Hispanic students by about 40 points, a disparity unchanged after seven years of DEI indoctrination.
Worse, racial tensions escalated. A 2023 audit of the SBUSD laid bare the consequences: students reported that staff routinely ignored racist bullying, normalizing it in the process. “It’s kind of normal to come to school and feel like it’s going to be a racist day today,” one student told auditors. Another noted, “Students get in trouble for cursing, but not for using the N-word.” Black students bore the brunt, with a surge in racial incidents—often perpetrated by Latino peers—prompting the creation of an anti-blackness task force by SBUSD. Ethnic Media Services reported on November 22, 2024, that Black parents were pleading with the SBUSD to address years of unchecked racial bullying. Far from closing achievement gaps or promoting harmony, DEI increased racism.
Failed DEI Rollout Increases Racism
Public reaction to the “Dear Colleague” letter has been telling. At the February 25, 2025, board meeting, most community comments supported the Federal Department of Education’s stance. I too stood up and spoke, citing SBUSD’s failed DEI rollout as evidence of its flaws. The million-dollar-plus investment in JCCC yielded not progress but regression—low test scores for minorities, large 40 point achievement gaps, and a documented rise in anti-Black racism. The data speaks for itself: SBUSD’s DEI model failed to improve test scores and worsened race relations.
Yet Escobedo and the board remain ideological and defiant. Even after JCCC lost funding in 2022—when test score data exposed its futility—the district clung to the victim-and-oppressor model. This isn’t principled leadership; it’s ideological stubbornness. The Education Department’s letter offers a lifeline: a chance to abandon divisive dogma and return to colorblind fairness. SBUSD’s refusal to seize it is a betrayal of its students and the community.
Children deserve an education that unites rather than divides, that lifts all boats rather than sinking some to appease a flawed ideology. The community, armed with facts and common sense, must rally behind the “Dear Colleague” letter. Reform isn’t just possible; it’s urgent. With the federal government back on the side of a colorblind society, we have a rare opportunity to reclaim our schools from the failed policies of DEI.
Santa Barbara’s future depends on it.
Greg Hammel is a husband, a father to three graduates of Santa Barbara Unified, and a professional with over 30 years of experience in the local high-tech industry.
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After the government began imposing draconian policies in the wake of COVID, I attended many SBCC Board of Trustees meetings trying to oppose the mandate of the experimental gene therapy deceptively labeled a COVID "vaccine". During that period, the Board of Trustees undertook an effort to use a funds windfall from a large donation to hire 10 "diversity" professors. I am not sure if they explicitly stated what that meant, but from their discussions, it was clear that it would exclude straight white men. When it came time to hire a new president/superintendent, do you think the mentality was any different? The only trustee who spoke against these policies was Veronica Gallardo who was bullied, including by white men Jonathan Abboud and Robert Miller, for doing so, despite being the only person of Latin origin on the board. What I observed was a very clear demonstration of how phony the claim of diversity and inclusion is. It is actually a movement meant to exclude people who respect the inherent sacred worth of every human being such as Christians. In other words, it is the opposite of what it claims to be. It is the imposition of a particular materialist, atheist, will to power belief system on society meant to displace Christianity, the belief system this country was founded on.
Informative. Institutionalizing DEI is not the answer; has proven a failure. SBUSD Elementary schools have proven a continued failure for the last 45 years of my advocacy. So what is the answer when the school board is dominated by politically ambitious, self serving puppet Trustees seated to advance their Party’s Agenda? SBUSD & SBCC Trustees are elected to support the teacher’s union, pensions, and protect high paying, unnecessary admin jobs for Party loyalists. Schools are not about students. There are many exceptional, exemplary SBUSD teachers who are student focused but they stay in hiding, off radar. These teachers know that family economics, a parent’s determination for their child’s school success, parent capacity to be involved raising, assisting their child (versus simply creating one), and zip code are all factors in a child’s elementary school academic success. A child who can’t read by third grade doesn’t stand a chance entering junior high. If all parents were taught what’s expected of American parents for 18 years; and every child started sequential Kumon Reading and Math by age 4-5 we’d be on the road to high proficiency. However learning requires daily sustained parent discipline to ensure each child spends 20-30 minutes 7 days a week on reading and math; and a parent spends another 30 minutes of 1:1 focused time on each child reading and assisting their child learn 15 new vocabulary words each week for five straight years. Santa Barbara can produce 7000 academically prepared, capable students by 7th grade. However, reading and math are outside the comfort zone of many parents, or they’re too tired after working a physically demanding non-government job (or 2 jobs), and their cultural tradition is only schools educate children which is not the American way.