When Nicole Solas wanted information on how Rhode Island school officials might be implementing a critical race theory curriculum in the kindergarten her child was about to attend, they threatened to sue her.
In Wellesley, Mass., when the entire high school was shown a presentation by Young Ethnic Scholars in April, students were told there would be “no tolerance” for sharing the information with anyone outside the school.
These are but two examples of what parents in several states say are attempts to inject critical race theory into the public school system on the sly. Knowing they would meet with considerable parental opposition, school officials stonewall requests for information or try to throw financial and legal obstacles in the way, according to opponents.
“They have been somewhat upfront about the activist education they are trying to impose,” said Anne Manusky, a parent in Connecticut’s Easton-Reading-Region 9 (ER9) school district, who has been fighting the administration and elected education officials on critical race theory matters.
“But we only catch word if we’re watching on Zoom or if our kids give us a heads-up,” she said. “They weren’t forthcoming when parents asked about it.”
Parents Defending Education (PDE), a group launched this year to combat what it considers the pernicious rise of critical race theory in K-12 public education, said it has received complaints about haughty or secretive school boards and administrators in more than four states.
“It is so common I think it’s certainly the default setting at this point,” said PDE President Nicole Neily. “Even extremely savvy parents who know what is going on and ask pointed questions are told, ‘we’re not doing that, we’re doing’ something else, which is the exact same programming of defining students by their race, pitting them against each other, etc.”
The group — which critical race theory proponents complain is a right-wing outfit trying to derail legitimate “anti-racist” educational programs — has documented other instances in Missouri, California, and other states where administrators have either stonewalled parents seeking information or told their faculty to pull lesson plans “so parents cannot see it.”
Much of the pushback is coming from small groups of parents or activists who oppose the rapid expansion of “diversity, equity and inclusion” programs, according to officials. Most of the decisions have been made in accordance with the rules and regulations governing public meetings and public records, they said.
In addition, onerous public records requests and privacy laws require them to charge high fees to review all emails and documents requested.
For their part, some administrators complain parents have had plenty of public notice, with public school board hearings devoted to antiracism issues over the past year.
“There have sometimes been extremely broad requests with thousands of emails,” said Clarence Zachary, the ER9 director of finance and operations. “All of our meetings have been held with public notice, and some of these things we have talked about for more than a year. If parents say they didn’t know, we can’t help that, but it certainly hasn’t been because of lack of notice.”
Several parents in four states spoke with The Washington Times who did not want to be identified. The atmosphere has become so hostile in their towns they said they fear personal attack if they question publicly some of the activities and materials in their children’s schools.
They described a similar pattern of apparent indifference or hostility to public records requests and questions that has marked the response of officials in many cases.
Ms. Solas, who has a child about to enroll in kindergarten in South Kingston, Rhode Island, has already had her issue publicly broadcast since she first asked officials why they weren’t using the words, “girl” and “boy” in school. Frustrated with what she considered a lack of candor in response to that and other questions, she filed a lengthy public records request.
“The school was not transparent when I asked how CRT and gender theory are taught,” she said. Ms. Solas said she asked if children had access to transgender storybooks, if there was any racial segregation in classes, and if students were being race-shamed and learning in an environment where a diversity of viewpoints was encouraged.
The school board responded by threatening to sue her. At a contentious, 4-hour public hearing on June 2, the board backed down from its threat but only after Ms. Solas was subjected to what she labeled “a show trial” that included people hectoring her as a racist during a public comment period.
Officials described her records request as “a clear attempt to wreak havoc” and “a clear attempt to harm [the] district,” and accused her of working with PDE which was described as a racist group trying “to spread chaos and confusion.”
She is still awaiting answers to her questions.
“They allowed community members to speak directly against me in the public comment session and I had no opportunity to confront the vitriol of these witnesses against me,” Ms. Solas told The Washington Times. “The school committee allowed a young woman whom I’ve never met to turn directly to me and call me racist simply because I submitted public record requests about CRT and gender theory in school. This set the tone for the remainder of my show trial where at least two hours of time was devoted to community members expressing either their approval or disapproval of my requests for public information along with their own suspicions of my motivations and intent.”
In Wellesley, Mass., where tensions have simmered over the public schools’ diversity, equity and inclusion plans, parents learned after the fact about required attendance at an April presentation by a group called Young Ethnic Scholars (YES). The presentation was replete with allegations of “decades of students of color, especially Black students, experiencing systemic and individualized racism in Wellesley.”
At the outset, all participants were told the material, much of it attacking police and defending protests after George Floyd was killed by Minneapolis police in 2020, was “to be seen only by the WPS [Wellesley Public Schools] community, there is no tolerance for sharing this work.”
Jacqueline Maxwell, the WPS contact listed for YES did not respond to questions about the “no tolerance” policy and a request for examples of the racism YES said has been rampant for years in Wellesley schools.
In the latest blowup in Connecticut’s ER9, officials have gone forward with a survey crafted by its Diversity Equity & Inclusion committee that will be sent to all high school and middle school students. Hundreds of parents and students objected to the survey, which they say will be of limited value because it is anonymous and voluntary.
It comes less than a month after Easton voters, by a 2-to-1 margin, rejected a referendum that would have declared racism “a public health crisis” there.
The survey asks 6th graders an extensive series of personal questions, including whether they identify as “cis,” “trans,” “genderqueer” or other options. It also asks them to talk about whether they feel the school is a comfortable environment that pays sufficient attention to racial and sexual issues.
Dana Benson, a parent who spoke against the survey at the board’s marathon May 25 Zoom meeting said backers of critical race theory who are pushing the survey as part of their agenda had tried to conduct it in a shroud of secrecy.
“Our concerns were ignored until we went public and informed the public of what you were doing,” he said.
These examples from New England and other states are indicative of a pattern and reflect an understanding the concepts introduced in many DEI initiatives are not well researched educational tools but political indoctrination, according to Ms. Neily and others.
“It seems to be a combination of term-shifting, as I think ‘critical race theory’ has become an increasingly toxic phrase, like ‘judicial activism’ or ‘eminent domain’ have over the years, bad-faith gaslighting — if we tell parents that we’re not doing this, they’ll go away — and in some rare instances, ignorance because some officials really don’t think their equity work falls under this rubric,” she said.
