By Adam Andrzejewski for RealClearInvestigations
Top line: A California school district used $2 million in taxpayer funds to train high school students to fight for racial and social justice, according to documents obtained by The Free Press.
Main aspects: The Long Beach Unified School District hired the group Californians for Justice in 2019 to provide equity and leadership training to students and teachers in its 84 schools.
As part of the contract, which is still ongoing, 78 students and 13 parents received stipends of approximately $1,400 to participate in internships with CFJ.
Among other programs, Californians for Justice hosted 15 student-led teacher training sessions. High school students taught their teachers about implicit bias and racism, costing the school $25,000. Teachers skipped plans on designing lesson plans to attend the sessions, The Free Press reported.
The CFJ website states that its goal is to “organize marginalized youth, especially youth of color, immigrants, low-income, and LGBTQ youth to create the healthy, equitable, and vibrant schools that all of our communities deserve.” .
Last October, the group published an Instagram post describing Israel’s war in Gaza as “ethnic cleansing and apartheid orchestrated by white supremacist settler colonialism intent on wiping out the indigenous Palestinian population.”
Background: OpenTheBooks auditors found that Long Beach Unified Superintendent Jill Baker is among the highest-paid employees in all of California with more than $371,000 in earnings in 2022.
As of 2022, there were an additional 106 educators making over $150,000 in the school district.
Critical quote: Jay Goldfischer, a history teacher in Long Beach, told The Free Press that “One of the reasons why [CFJ] was assumed is to help our students find their own voice and be able to express it, but in reality, CFJ does not help students find their own voice. He is giving them a written voice that is not theirs. They are teaching them to parrot, which is the exact opposite of how you empower children.”
Another school employee called the student and teacher salaries a “horrible propaganda strategy.”
Supporting quote: “Our agenda is not hidden and is simple: We want the Long Beach Unified School District to be a place where every student is honestly represented in classrooms and curriculum and where they can feel safe engaging in critical dialogue in support of democratic participation regardless of differences,” a CFJ spokesperson told The Free Press in an email.
Summary: Perhaps taxpayer money used by high school students to run their own classes should be reserved for teaching math and reading.
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Distributed with permission from RealClearWire.