(The Sentinel) – The seven Kansas school districts currently known to include Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs in their curriculum don’t appear to be in a rush to eliminate them, despite recent warnings from the U.S. Department of Education (USDE).
The national grassroots organization Parents Defending Education finds nearly 23,000 schools in the United States educating over 14 million students have active DEI initiatives.
The USDE letter from the department’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) to school districts dated February 14 appeared to leave no room for misunderstanding as to the intentions of the department:
The Department will no longer tolerate the overt and covert racial discrimination that has become widespread in this Nation’s educational institutions. The law is clear: treating students differently on the basis of race to achieve nebulous goals such as diversity, racial balancing, social justice or equity is illegal under controlling Supreme Court precedent. All students are entitled to a school environment free from discrimination. The Department is committed to ensuring those principles are a reality.
The letter went on to read that USDE planned to begin assessing compliance with its directive on February 28th.
In a webinar sponsored by the Kansas School Board Resource Center, which, like The Sentinel, is a subsidiary of Kansas Policy Institute, attorneys Ryan Kriegshauser and Josh Ney discussed the implications of the USDE directive for local school districts and answered questions from school board members. Ney commented on a policy change that normally comes with a change of administration:
“Even though this feels like a very significant sea change; no school district likes to be threatened with the loss of federal funding. In terms of the actual applications of law, what we really see this as is more of a reset button to how we all understood civil rights statutes and laws and constitutional principles prior to the last few years.”
Kriegshauser was asked about the potential funding cuts and the current lawsuits seeking to preempt them:
“Funding cuts aren’t just going to come. There has to be some kind of compliance review or action by the Office of Civil Rights to begin that process, and then they have to find a violation. But these peremptory challenges on these OCR letters, in particular, are going to be pretty shaky; to have a lawsuit saying you can’t take away these programs based on that OCR letter, because it (the OCR letter) didn’t technically do anything. The OCR letter is just saying, this is how we’re going to interpret the law going forward, but it doesn’t create any new law.”
Federal funding accounts for about 12% of school districts’ budgets.
We reached out to superintendents, DEI managers, and school board presidents in the Blue Valley, Kansas City Kansas, Lawrence, Olathe, Shawnee Mission, Topeka, and Wichita districts and asked their time frames for dismantling their DEI initiatives and how much they would save their districts by doing so. Most did not respond.
Of those responding:
Kaci Brutto with the Blue Valley District:
“We are monitoring the status around the current litigation concerning executive orders and remain committed to complying with all applicable laws and regulations.”
Edwin Birch is with the Kansas City, Kansas District:
“Kansas City, Kansas Public Schools will continue to follow all requirements at both the state and federal levels.”
Kansas Policy Institute CEO Dave Trabert says the purpose of a school district is to academically prepare students for life after high school, and everything a district does should be viewed through that lens.
“At least some of the rationale for having DEI programming was that student achievement would improve if students felt more welcomed, but that hasn’t been the case.
“Math and reading outcomes on the state assessment show the districts with known DEI programming, which first appeared in 2019, mostly show achievement declines between 2018 and 2024. There are a few tiny improvements among those districts, but outcomes in each of those districts remain far below what most parents would call ‘mission accomplished.’
“The OCR notice aside, the question that board members should be asking is, ‘Why should we spend any more time and resources on something that isn’t producing the intended results?’
“Achievement levels for minority groups and low-income students are horrendously low, with half or more below grade level.
“Shouldn’t board members focus all their efforts on improving outcomes for these students?”
