Before taking a Mexican American studies class — also known as MAS — Franklin High School student Karen Jimenez didn’t know the Aztecs called themselves the Mexica when they founded the city of Tenochitlan, the historic center of modern-day Mexico City.
Her classmate Leo Arrata didn’t know migrant workers entering El Paso in the early 1900’s through the U.S.-Mexico border were stripped naked and sprayed with hazardous delousing chemicals. This included Zyklon B, a poisonous gas that was used in Nazi death camps.
“We don’t talk about this and it’s just so crazy, it’s shocking to learn about,” Arrata said last month at the one-year anniversary of Cafecito y MAS, a monthly community meeting discussing Mexican American studies hosted by his Franklin High School history teacher Karina Echavarri.
Echavarri and some of her fellow history teachers are raising concerns that students may not learn about these topics as fewer schools offer the class. At the same time, educators and Democratic state officials are warning against attacks on diversity by Republican lawmakers and the GOP-led State Board of Education, which may make it harder for El Paso students to learn about their own history.
“In Mexican American studies, we talk about the good, the bad and the ugly. So, for me, I just want to keep this class alive,” Echavarri told El Paso Matters. “I’m not pushing for everyone to have to take it. But this is too much of an important class for you not to have that option in your school to learn about your own history.”
The El Paso Independent School District had five schools offering MAS as an elective when she first started teaching the subject in 2022, Echavarri said. Now, it’s down to three after Coronado High School canceled the class at the start of the school year.
Coronado High School history and MAS teacher, Ruben Sandoval, said he was told the class was dropped due to lack of interest, and was asked to teach a dual-credit course instead.
“We have so many sections of dual-credit and not enough dual-credit instructors, so I think that was the real reason,” Sandoval said.
El Paso Independent School District officials said the MAS class at Coronado High School was canceled this year due to low enrollment. They noted that course offerings are decided annually at each campus based on student interest and staffing.
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Now, only five schools across El Paso’s two largest districts offer MAS. This includes Bowie, Franklin High School, and Jefferson/Silva high schools at El Paso ISD and Montwood and Socorro high schools at Socorro ISD.
Ysleta ISD officials said none of its schools offer the class, but it is a part of the district’s course catalog, meaning it could be offered in the future.
Attacks on diversity in social studies
MAS is an ethnic studies elective designed for students in 10th-12th grades, according to the state’s social studies Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills.
The standards for the class, officially titled “Ethnic Studies: An Overview of Americans of Mexican Descent,” were approved in 2018 by the State Board of Education.
While students briefly learn about some of the topics covered in MAS in their core history classes, Montwood High School social studies teacher Amanda Brown said they rarely have time to venture beyond the surface-level curriculum.
“Teaching a tested subject, you’re always on a time crunch. So, we don’t have enough time to dive deep into things like the Chicano movement, or even the Civil Rights Movement with Black History Month,” Brown said.
“You can’t really delve into it, or really get into the nuts and bolts, because then you’ll have to sacrifice something else. A lot of the Mexican American history is not really going to be on the (State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness), but it’s important to the kids,” Sandoval added.
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El Paso’s representative on the State Board of Education, Gustavo Reveles, worries that those already limited discussions on MAS in history classes may further diminish as the state overhauls its social studies standards — also known as the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, or TEKS.
The extensive TEKS update began in April 2025, shortly before state lawmakers passed Senate Bill 12, which banned diversity, equity and inclusion policies and programs in public schools, among other changes.
Although the bill does not affect MAS or other ethnic studies classes that are part of the state curriculum, it prohibits school activities or programs from referring to race, color, ethnicity, gender identity or sexual orientation.
Reveles said a majority of the content advisors chosen to give recommendations on the new standards were appointed by Republican board members who wanted to increase focus on U.S. and Texas history and deemphasize world history and cultures.
“The results so far are approaches to topics that lack the diversity of our state,” Reveles said. “I’m very concerned about the lack of history TEKS that focus on the student population we serve, in particular the African American and the Mexican American population.”
Now a group of educators will use those recommendations, which were adopted by the board in January, to write the new state standards. The board plans to revise and vote on the TEKS in the summer.
The recommendations do not include changes to the state’s MAS curriculum.
Whit Barringer, the K-12 social studies education expert with the American Historical Association, said the recommendations for the standards have less diversity across the board than the current ones and push coverage of most people of color to the period before 1500 A.D., which isn’t taught until fifth grade.
Some of the changes are a part of a larger objective among conservative education reformers in Texas to “bombard teachers and students with content, replace teacher autonomy with state control of curriculum,” Barringer said in a statement.
“As the state of Texas takes more control of the humanities, the actual scope of the content taught to students is getting narrower. All Texans should be concerned that the SBOE has so thoroughly designed a process that can create a framework and key topics — which determine what TEKS the work groups are allowed to write — so out of touch with the needs of a diverse, twenty-first century Texas,” Barringer added.
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Reveles and Barringer said ethnic studies may still be in danger, even if they have already been approved by the state.
“There’s a movement in both the Legislature and at the state, at the SBOE level, to step away from that type of instruction and it’s concerning,” Reveles said.
The State Board of Education is in charge of reviewing and revising curriculum standards for all subjects, which it usually does on a 10-year cycle.
The state’s MAS standards have not been updated since they were implemented in 2018. Reveles said he is unsure when they will be up for review.
The benefits of MAS
Echavarri, Sandoval and Brown said MAS helps El Paso students build deeper connections with the past and better understand history.
“We always taught history from a Western European perspective; if it’s U.S. history, it’s an Anglo-American perspective. And the kids never really made a connection, especially when you have a population like El Paso, where you have a high percentage of Latino students,” Sandoval said.
Echavarri said her students sometimes realize that their grandparents and other older relatives were a part of history when learning about the Bracero Program, which allowed millions of Mexican workers to come to the U.S. between 1942 and 1964 under temporary work permits to ease labor shortages during World War II.
“It gives you such a sense of pride for our culture, because our families really don’t talk too much about that. It’s about being able to look up to people that look like you and that come from the barrio,” Echavarri said.
Brown said the class also gives students the opportunity to talk about current events that affect Mexican Americans, including the Trump administration’s efforts to increase deportations, leading to heightened immigration enforcement across the U.S.
“History is unfolding before our eyes on social media. Students know what’s happening. It’s unfolding right before them on their phones, and I feel like having that discussion is important,” Brown said.
The post Too important to lose: El Paso history teachers fight to keep Mexican American studies alive appeared first on El Paso Matters.
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