Investigating Sequoia Union High School District
Letter to the Community
The failures of Sequoia Union High School District leadership have resulted in irreparable harm to students, educators, and the broader community. Students have lost mentors, essential educational services, and their voices when they have spoken out through protests, walkouts, and public testimonies. Instead of addressing these concerns, district officials have erased student activism, crippled affinity groups, buried dissent, and maintained a false image of progress. Meanwhile, educators who have upheld high ethical standards, those who have fought for equity, spoken out against discrimination, and protected marginalized students, have been systematically targeted and pushed out. For far too long, this district has fostered a toxic, cult-like culture of performative gestures and tokenism, prioritizing optics over genuine student and staff well-being.
We see you. We hear you. We know the weight of what you have endured, and we refuse to let these injustices be forgotten. InvestigatingSUHSD.com is a long-term project dedicated to exposing these truths and creating an enduring record of harm that cannot be ignored. We know that many of you are too mentally and emotionally exhausted to keep fighting after years of being silenced, dismissed, and retaliated against. That is why we are standing up—not just for ourselves, but for every student, educator, and community member who has been forced to suffer in silence. Over the next two years, we will build a comprehensive database of public comments from board meetings, analyze leadership decisions, and develop a reporting system to document experiences while ensuring privacy and legal protection. We will educate the community on how leadership should be validating experiences and actively working toward real accountability and healing. This work will reveal the patterns of failure, inaction, and exploitation that district leadership has relied on for decades, painting a clear picture of where they are failing and what they must be doing instead.
There is no doubt that great things do happen in SUHSD. There are incredible students, dedicated teachers, and tireless advocates who fight every day to uplift and empower others. Those successes should be celebrated, but they should also be the standard while genuinely confronting and eradicating harms before they happen. The real damage lies in how leadership weaponizes those successes to hide systemic failures, allowing major injustices to persist in silence. The community is only shown what leadership wants them to see, while deep-rooted issues of discrimination, retaliation, and inequity are kept in the dark. Only those closest to marginalized communities, or deeply involved in advocacy work, truly witness the harm that is being ignored. This is the danger of the performative culture SUHSD promotes. It allows leadership to deflect accountability and ignore please for change while real harm continues, often invisible to the broader public.
This platform will not just expose past failures but serve as an ongoing framework for transparency and accountability that other communities can learn from, using SUHSD as one of the worst examples of systemic harms and supremacy culture in the state of California. The district can no longer suppress the truth or silence those who demand change. If you have been impacted by SUHSD’s failures, your voice matters, and your pain is real. Even if you cannot fight right now, we are fighting for you. This is about reclaiming power, ensuring that no more students or educators are sacrificed, and building a district that truly serves its community, not just its leadership’s public image. We will not be ignored, and we will not stop until justice is served.
Timeline for 2025
March & Beginning of April
The site’s basic framework and key pages will go live this month, setting the foundation for public access to information and an understanding of how this project will unfold.
April - May
We will expand by adding news articles, past and present, and begin compiling the framework for a public comments database from board meetings, both recent and historical.
Beyond
A reporting system will be developed to collect data on community experiences while ensuring privacy and legal protection. We will also begin analyzing the policies and decisions of district leadership, including looking at the actions (or inaction) of the Superintendent, Board Members, HR, principals, and administrators.
Our goal is to fully educate the community on their responsibilities and failures so the community can have an enduring resource and record to assist them in fighting for their rights. This education and training will highlight the gaps in leadership, expose harmful practices, and provide undeniable evidence of where administrators and the school board have failed the community for years.