El Rancho Unified School District will stop requiring its high-school students to take geography and instead require them to take a class on diversity and inclusion.

ERUSD president Aurora Villon said the class is necessary because minority students “need to feel validated.”

“When you negate their culture, they feel less than other students,” she said in an e-mail to Whittier Daily News.


98 percent of the district’s students are Hispanic.

The class will “expose . . . . students to global perspectives and inclusion of diversity,” according to ERUSD vice president Jose Lara.

The district plans to have the program implemented by the 2015–16 school year.