Parents, Administrators Are Suing The PA Department Of Education Over DEI-Themed Teacher Trainings

Families, teachers and administrators from three Western Pennsylvania counties are suing the state Department of Education over its “culturally relevant and sustaining education” (CR-SE) guidelines, arguing that the guidelines violate state and federal civil rights guarantees.

Last year, the state Department of Education announced new “culturally relevant” teacher training programs that will train educators in “anti-racist” ideology. The guidelines will ask teachers to “interrogate their biases and recognize inequality in schools and school systems,” including “institutional racism,” WHYY reported.

When crafting the new teacher training programs, state officials consulted Sharif El-Mekki, the CEO of the Philadelphia-based Center for Black Educator Development. In a 69-page document, El-Mekki’s group quotes fugitive cop killer Asatta Shakur, who was convicted of killing a New Jersey state trooper in 1973. The group bills Shakur — who escaped from prison and was granted asylum by the Castro regime in 1979 — as a “civil rights activist.” The document also talks about cultivating “the teacher to activist pipeline” so that teachers can encourage students to fight for “social justice.”

Now, the guidelines have led to legal action against the state on behalf of parents and administrators in Western Pennsylvania.

According to their complaint, the new standards constitute compelled speech by dictating what teachers can and should believe. In one instance, teachers are informed that “micro-aggressions” are instructed that they must work to evaluate their “own conscious/unconscious biases.”

“How do you measure whether someone believes or doesn’t believe?” said Thomas Breth, special counsel for the Thomas More Society and attorney for the plaintiffs. “Must they sign an oath and have it notarized? And how does one objectively determine a microaggression? For school districts, if they don’t comply and make students comply, they could lose their basic education subsidies. We’re dealing with very serious issues and very serious consequences.”

Donna-Marie Cole-Malott, co-director of the Pennsylvania Educator Diversity Consortium (PEDC), which helped draft the guidelines, has argued that the plaintiffs are “misunderstanding what they are reading.” The guidelines, she claims, merely provide educators with resources to help them “create an environment of respect, to create more welcoming and confirming spaces.”

The lawsuit further argues that the process of drafting the guidelines were illegally crafted behind closed doors. “This is the government saying, you will believe this, you will state that you believe this or there will be consequences,” said Breth. “I’m against that whether its conservative, liberal, progressive, non-progressive.”