Parental rights organization Parents Defending Education has worked nonstop in recent years to expose school districts across the country for policies and curriculum meant to indoctrinate students. This ranges from curriculum on Critical Race Theory (CRT) to keeping parents in the dark about their children’s names and pronouns at school.
Townhall has covered how many districts have been caught trying to implement these things into their schools. Now, PDE is going to file a federal civil rights complaint with the US Department of Education against a New York school district for discrimination on the basis of race in programs that receive federal financial assistance.
According to PDE, the Kingston City School District in New York “has educator programming and that are not accessible to all educators” (via PDE):
The District only permits some educators to participate and their participation is based on immutable characteristics.
Allegedly, KCSD’s Department of Diversity’s goals include to “implement a plan for hiring staff to proportionately reflect our student body” and other things that show that the school district is acting “in a race conscious and discriminatory way” (via PDE):
The department has two primary goals: “develop and implement a plan for faculty and staff to proportionately reflect the diverse student body” and “conduct a thorough curriculum review, adopt culturally relevant curricula and provide teacher support in the implementation and evaluate district policies, practices and procedures through the lens of equity”
The Director of the department, Kathy Sellitti’s role is to “create pathways for curriculum development that consistently look through the lens of inclusion and belonging,” as opposed to other important merit-based curriculum factors
The Equity in Action Committee notes the importance of “expect[ing] to experience discomfort,” “expect[ing] non-closure,” and “recognizing/owning your privilege in the room” are primary agreements involved in the DEI policy and curricula development”
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Admittance into the “Educators of Color Network” affinity group appears to be solely based on an individual’s race. This particular affinity group appears to only aid in the recruitment and retention of educators, based solely on the individual’s race.
“Identifying, hiring, and retaining educators based on their race and gender identification, who lack baseline certifications, is an abhorrent abuse of power and disgusting use of taxpayer dollars, not to mention illegal. Students need to be surrounded by educators who excel in their fields and can help them meet their fullest potential. Sadly, this is just the tip of the iceberg. OCR should promptly investigate Kingston City School Districts, as well as any others who’ve created DEI departments in the K-12 space,” Caroline Moore, vice president of PDE, told Townhall
