Editor’s note: Ask Us is a weekly feature published online Mondays and in print on Tuesdays. We’ll seek to answer your questions about items or trends in Rowan County. Have a question? Email it to askus@salisburypost.com.

Rowan-Salisbury Schools Chief Academic Officer Jason Gardner says the district hasn’t discussed critical race theory as being part of the curriculum, and he isn’t aware of any discussion of the subject by the state’s curriculum team.

A reader asked whether local schools teach critical race theory, which seeks to examine America’s history through the lens of race and racism. Gardner said he has received similar questions recently and is unsure of what’s triggering the questions.

“We want to be clear. We follow the state curriculum,” Gardner said. “We do have a desire to make sure our courses are inclusive of all backgrounds and we continue to work on that.”

Gardner said the state’s course of study goes through an extensive review process. Standards adopted by the N.C. State Board of Education in February went through years of revisions. The process of developing the standards has been chronicled in public meetings, draft versions of the standards, public comments and input from local districts.

“They do not just change standards on a whim,” Gardner said.

Gardner said Rowan-Salisbury Schools wants students to pick up books with characters that look like them and teach a wide range of history from all viewpoints.

Some electives offered by Rowan-Salisbury Schools include African-American studies at most of its high schools, Latino American studies, 20th-century civil liberties and civil rights and the Holocaust.

The new standards adopted by the state board include discussion about racism and marginalized people. On June 9, a COVID-19 relief bill passed the N.C. House of Representatives, but the bill also included a one-year delay on the standards. The theory also has come under fire from other Republican-controlled legislatures. More than two dozen state legislatures have either discussed or passed laws concerning teaching subset topics of the theory.

Earlier this month, former President Donald Trump called for banning critical race theory from schools.

The theory dates back to the late 1970s in legal academia. The UNC-Chapel Hill History Department said critical race theory “is not propaganda” in a statement about a 2020 memo from Trump’s office barring race-related training in federal agencies.

“It is a scholarly framework that describes how race, class, gender and sexuality organize American life,” the department stated. “As such, it is foundational to anyone who practices law, policy, social work or medicine, or examines inequities in educational achievement, wealth or other indicators of success in our society.”