Your four core rights
- Inspect the curriculum — Education Code § 49091.14 covers the syllabus and instructional materials for your child's courses, including supplemental handouts and vendor content.
- Inspect student records — § 49069.7 gives you access to your child's records, including assignments, evaluations, and disciplinary entries.
- Excuse your child from certain instruction — including comprehensive sexual health and HIV prevention instruction, with written notice.
- Be free from discrimination and retaliation — § 220 and Title VI protect your child from race-based different treatment and protect you from retaliation for objecting.
How to ask so the district has to answer
Vague requests invite vague replies. Address the request to the principal and the district curriculum office, cite the statute, list the documents by category, and ask for a written response by a specific date.
- Course syllabus and pacing guide for the named course and teacher.
- All slide decks, handouts, and worksheets used this term.
- Assigned readings, videos, and external links.
- Third-party curriculum, vendor names, and any consultant contracts or invoices.
- Guest speaker names and organizational affiliations.
- Grading rubrics for any assignment involving advocacy, activism, or personal identity.
Two different legal doors
Curriculum inspection under the Education Code is about your child's classroom, and it is the faster route for syllabi and handouts. A California Public Records Act request is about the district as an institution, and it is the route for contracts, invoices, training decks, and board materials.
Use both. The Education Code request tells you what is being taught; the Public Records Act request tells you who sold it to the district and what the district paid.
What to do with a refusal
A refusal is not a dead end — it is evidence. Ask the district to state its denial in writing and identify the legal basis. Note every deadline that passes. A district that withholds material it is required to disclose has created a separate, documentable problem on top of whatever the material says.
If the response includes a claim that vendor content is proprietary and therefore unavailable to parents, preserve that language verbatim.
Frequently asked questions
What curriculum rights do California parents have?
Education Code § 49091.14 gives parents the right to inspect the curriculum for their child's courses, including supplemental and third-party materials. Districts must also make the course syllabus available, and parents may inspect their child's school records under § 49069.7.
Can I request records the district has not published?
Often yes. Contracts with curriculum vendors, consultant invoices, training materials, and board-adopted frameworks are typically public records obtainable under the California Public Records Act. Requests should be specific and in writing.
How long does a district have to respond?
Under the Public Records Act a district generally must respond within 10 calendar days, with a limited extension available in unusual circumstances. Curriculum-inspection requests under the Education Code should be answered promptly; ask for a written response with a date certain.
Can my child be excused from specific instruction?
California allows parents to excuse a child from comprehensive sexual health and HIV prevention instruction, and from instruction that conflicts with sincerely held religious beliefs or moral convictions in certain contexts. There is no blanket opt-out from ethnic studies, but individual assignments may still be objectionable on civil-rights grounds.
What if the district ignores me or retaliates?
Document it. A refusal, a delay, a partial production, or any adverse change in your child's grades, discipline, or activities after you object becomes part of the record. Send that record to us — Javitch Law Office reviews submissions confidentially at no cost.
What to do next
Request the curriculum in writing, save everything your child brings home, then send it to us. Javitch Law Office reviews every submission confidentially, at no cost.