Rialto Unified School District is a school district in San Bernardino County, California, serving most of Rialto, sections of Colton, Fontana and San Bernardino, and the census-designated place of Lytle Creek. - Text list
The school district has about 26,485 students, 3,800 staff, and a budget of about $200 million.
History The district's first schoolhouse, which opened in 1888, was a part of the Brooke School District. The Rialto school district was formed out of the Brooke district on April 9, 1891."120 Years of RUSD - A Look Back..." (Archive). Rialto Unified School District. Retrieved on July 1, 2014. Holocaust writing assignment controversy
In 2014, Rialto Unified attracted national criticism after it gave its roughly 2,000 eighth-grade students an argumentative writing assignment asking them to determine, based on their research, whether the Holocaust was "an actual event in history, or merely a political scheme created to influence public emotion and gain wealth". The assignment had been written by a team of the district's eighth-grade language arts teachers and cleared its Educational Services Department before being given out in April under interim superintendent Mohammad Z. Islam. The accompanying source packet included printed material from a Holocaust denial website.
After The San Bernardino Sun reporter Beau Yarbrough broke the story in May 2014, the Anti-Defamation League and the Simon Wiesenthal Center condemned the prompt. District spokeswoman Syeda Jafri initially defended it as a Common Core critical-thinking exercise, but at an emergency meeting the school board, through its president Joanne Gilbert, apologized and called the assignment "horribly inappropriate". The district revised its assignment-review process, sent the eighth-graders and their teachers to the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, and provided sensitivity training for teachers. Islam and Jafri received death threats that police traced to a man in Connecticut.
A follow-up investigation by the Sun found that, contrary to the district's initial claims, at least 50 of the students' essays denied or doubted that the Holocaust occurred. Elementary schools Levi Bemis Elementary School Bobcats J. Calvin Boyd Elementary School Bulldogs Merle S. Casey Elementary School Cougars Sam V. Curtis Elementary School Colts Helen L. Dollahan Elementary School Dalmatians George H. Dunn Elementary School Dolphins Dr. Edward M. Fitzgerald Elementary School Foxes Dr. Ernest Garcia Elementary School Grizzlies Lida M. Henry Elementary School Hawks Elizabeth T. Hughbanks Elementary School Huskies J. P. Kelley Elementary School Koalas A. H. Morgan Elementary School Mustangs Georgia F. Morris Elementary School Mountain Lions W. A. Myers Elementary School Dragons Lena M. Preston Elementary School Panthers Samuel W. Simpson Elementary School Seahawks W. J. C. Trapp Elementary School Timberwolves Nancy R. Kordyak Elementary School Cubs Charlotte Nan Werner Elementary School, opening July 2008, named after an area mother
Middle schools Warren H. Frisbie Middle School Falcons William G. Jehue Middle School Jaguars Ben F. Kolb Middle School Cougars Ethel Kucera Middle School Coyotes Rialto Middle School Tigers
High schools Wilmer Amina Carter High School Lions Eisenhower High School Eagles Rialto High School (San Bernardino - Linked from here . A school icon is placed where Rialto High is. Please compare with the full street name, number, and ZIP code of the school: - Despite the Rialto address, the school is in the San Bernardino city limits, not the Rialto city limits.) Knights Dr. John Milor High School Mustangs Charles Zupanic High School
References
External links Rialto Unified School District Edna Herring retiring. The Board of Education Joint Statement(Archive). Rialto Unified School District. - This is about the Holocaust controversy. Klein, Karin. "The Holocaust mistake at Rialto schools is more than a glitch" (Opinion). Los Angeles Times. May 8, 2014.