The Department of Justice (DOJ) has awarded K-12 schools more than $100 million in grants supporting the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) agenda.
At least 30 grants totaling $100,113,942 have been awarded since 2021, Parents Defending Education (PDE) has learned.
Many of the awards “had an explicit goal of improving school climate for ‘disproportionately impacted’ groups, singling out LGBTQ+ and BIPOC,” PDE wrote.
One of the grants, awarded to the Minnesota Department of Education, was worth almost $2 million to create “safe learning environments where practices of anti-racism and anti-oppression are embedded.” Another grant worth $1.8 million and received by Bowling Green State University in Ohio, was designed to “develop student mental health curriculum in rural and high-poverty districts that involved ‘mindfulness meditation, yoga, and knitting circles,’” the organization wrote.
One program, a collaborative effort between Pennsylvania’s Temple University and The School District of Philadelphia taught at-risk youth about “community policing, trauma informed conflict emphasizing racial/historical and intergenerational trauma, impacts of social media on conflict and conflict escalation and management, anti-bias education, restorative practices.”
Ocean County in New Jersey was granted $1 million to reduce violence. The proposal suggested that “teasing” was equivalent to oppression.
American Faith reported that the Biden administration’s Department of Education has directed more than $1 billion toward DEI initiatives since 2021. The grants funded three main areas: DEI-driven hiring, educational programming, and mental health training.
Specifically, $489,883,797.81 was spent on hiring, $343,337,286 on programming, and $169,301,221 on mental health.
PDE researcher Rhyen Staley said of the findings, “The only people or groups to benefit from the enormous amount of grant funding are the universities, administrators, and DEI consultants, at the expense of children’s education. This needs to change by placing children’s learning at the forefront of education, instead of prioritizing race-based policies and DEI.”
