Hundreds of newly hired teachers in the Mat-Su School District are being instructed to infuse their classrooms with controversial and divisive ideas rooted in critical race theory.

The Matanuska Susitna Education Association (MSEA), which represents more than 1,200 teachers, nurses, librarians and other district staff who work for the Mat-Su School District, recently received a $674,010 grant from the National Education Association (NEA) to embark on a three-year mentorship program to train more than 250 teachers. The grant looks to address union-paying educators by increasing teacher retention while equipping them to impart radical social justice ideas to Mat-Su students.

“The union claims that it desires to leverage its “power and collective voice” to reach “every student”

In awarding the grant to the Mat-Su union, the NEA said it put a high priority on “racial justice in education.” Any grant application that focused on this theme received a scoring bonus “depending on how robust or extensive that focus is.”

According to the NEA website, addressing social justice entails telling children that inequalities “result from institutionally racist policies and practices in our schools and the communities in which our students live.” 

The NEA’s take on racism closely mirrors many of the key tenets of critical race theory, including the claim that white students “often see racism being accepted and normalized, without acknowledgement or accountability.”

“White supremacy culture” is another major concern for the NEA. The union claims that it desires to leverage its “power and collective voice” to reach “every student” with the message that white supremacy ideology, “while often associated with violence perpetrated by the KKK and other white supremacist groups … also describes a political ideology and systemic oppression that perpetuates and maintains the social, political, historical and/or industrial white domination.”

The new Mat-Su grant comes on the heels of the NEA’s pledge earlier this summer to harness it’s extensive network and resources to expand critical race theory across America’s public school system.

The 3-million-member organization, which includes 13,000 Alaskans, resolved during its July convention to teach and publicize critical race theory, while actively fighting against those who oppose such efforts.

The NEA stated that it will focus resources on rooting out what it deems to be “empire, white supremacy, anti-Blackness, anti-Indigeneity, racism, patriarchy, cis-heteropatriarchy, capitalism, ableism, anthropocentrism, and other forms of power and oppression at the intersections of our society.”

The NEA also approved an action item to research and undermine groups that resist critical race theory and to “oppose attempts to ban critical race theory and/or The 1619 Project,” which alleges that America was founded on fundamentally racist grounds.

TAKING ACTION

• Click here to contact the Mat-Su School Board to express your concerns about the MSEA’s mentorship program.

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