When the school board voted in December 2024 about the new Social Studies curriculum being piloted, an uproar followed.

A little more than a year later, and the school board approved the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) curriculum, which teachers had piloted for two years.

Social Studies teachers were furious over the denial in 2024. Four of the seven school board members believed that the content contained a bias of omission, and therefore did not approve it.

“I was really angry … mostly at the BOE members that kept repeating how much they respected us as educators, but their actions said something to the contrary,” said Jimmy Adams, the former co-chair of the department.

However, on Nov. 4, 2025, two of the four members who denied the curriculum were voted off the school board. With the arrival of new board members, the Social Studies department decided to reopen the conversation. 

“Slowly but surely, we tried to plan our next steps, and we began to organize ourselves to keep the issue alive. We tried to answer arguments against the curriculum with words and actions that were meant to create discussion, not amplify disagreements,” Social Studies teacher Kendal Warkentine said. “We didn’t want to create controversy…we didn’t want to hide anything, but rather to foster a spirit of cooperation and compromise.”

After reviewing the curriculum again, the HMH curriculum was approved, and teachers began meeting with company representatives to learn how to implement it in the classroom.

“I voted to approve the curriculum,” Board of Education member Anne Phillips said. “With the combined 300 years of educator experience in the Social Studies department, coupled with my own research into the proposed curriculum, I felt that the curriculum met the standards for our students. I found the HMH curriculum to be quite neutral, with instruction that would lead to student critical thinking and exploration into subjects.”

Although Adams is no longer a teacher in Derby, the approval was still a win for him.

“(I was) very excited for my former colleagues and for the students,” he said. “We didn’t select HMH because we knew it was going to be controversial; we selected it because it was by far the best product for students for a variety of reasons that didn’t fit the previous BOE agenda.  They put their political beliefs before the well-being of the students and their education.” 

No matter what, Warkentine never gave up.

“I think it is important for students to realize the value of being quietly and firmly persistent,” he said. “We knew we had good material; we knew what we were asking for wasn’t the horrible, awful thing it was being made out to be.  We knew we had to stand firm for the betterment of our students. We didn’t let setbacks stop us, rather we used them to see how we could strengthen and fortify our position and better answer our opposition.”