Report: Biden using Dept. of Ed to shut down parent dissent on inappropriate books
A FOX News report details the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights targeting school districts that listen to parents
A recent report by FOX News details the Biden administration, through the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR), targeting school districts that have listened to parent complaints about inappropriate and often pornographic books.
Here is the opening excerpt, however, the article goes into much deeper detail and should be read in full:
As parents are fighting to remove pornographic content from their kids' schools, the Biden administration is starting to weaponize a federal agency to combat parents' efforts in local districts under the threat of withholding funding, according to education experts.
The Department of Education Office of Civil Rights will begin informing districts on how reviewing and removing books from schools challenged by parents can create a racially and sexually hostile environment in violation of federal law, according to a June announcement from the White House.
Fox News Digital spoke with a senior official at the DOE, who said, "We do ask that districts satisfy federal law, and that's a condition of receiving federal funds."
The move signals that the DOE can investigate a district for simply reviewing parents' concerns about sexually explicit content in schools, Max Eden, a research fellow focusing on K-12 education at the American Enterprise Institute, said.
Eden is correct and the report goes on to describe how OCR has already taken such actions with regard to the Forsyth County school district in Georgia where parents requested the removal of books containing explicit sex acts, bestiality, and adult content.
“In May, the Office of Civil Rights determined that as Forsyth County Public Schools reviewed pornographic content, it likely created a racially and sexually hostile environment for students. That determination was made despite a tacit acknowledgment in the investigation's findings that the district only focused on sexually explicit books,” the FOX News report says.
In the report, a “Senior DOE official” told FOX that "We certainly weren't looking at the content, but also the district's response to notice that it had that student believe that they were experiencing a hostile environment based on race and based on sex was inadequate under [federal law]. That's totally separate question from what books the district shouldn't offer."
Read the documents for the Forsyth “investigation” here and here.
Note in the case resolution document, the word parent(s) is mentioned a single time under the "Climate survey" Forysth is being forced to enact and report back to the U.S. Dept. of Education:
The District will notify parents of an opportunity to provide input or comments about the survey to the Working Group
What parent is going to provide input on a survey being turned over to a federal agency when the Biden administration's DOJ has already demonstrated it will send the FBI after parents who speak out at their school board meetings?
It is interesting to note that OCR didn’t ask that the books in question be returned to school libraries, yet Forsyth went ahead and settled with OCR.
The Forsyth case is similar to the scenario that played out in Wake County Public Schools where several activist groups filed a complaint with OCR over discipline policies being racially slanted and the district settled by creating the “Office of Equity Affairs” or OEA for short.
The OEA has been a very expensive office for taxpayers given it has produced seemingly no results as minority test scores have continued to fall while fights and violence in schools have risen - a situation which has not gone unnoticed by the public.
The only evidence of the OEA’s work can be seen in the Critical Race Theory teacher training administered each year. That’s partly by design as the district told me there are no metrics in place tracking the office’s achievements other than individual employee reviews.
More To The Story
The central figure in moving ahead with the Forsyth case is OCR’s Assistant Secretary Catherine Lhamon.
Lhamon was confirmed by the Senate in Oct. 2021, but only after VP Harris cast a tie-breaker vote.
During the confirmation hearing, Lhamon was heavily grilled by lawmakers over the way she implemented 2011 standards for Title IX campus sexual assault cases, including how the policies eliminated basic due process rights, such as the right to cross-examine an accuser. In the wake of those policies, a number of students who had their rights violated by a one-sided campus hearing were successful in having their convictions overturned in an actual courtroom.
Lhamon’s issues related to Title IX have continued.
Last year, 15 attorneys general sent a letter to Lhamon claiming that the Obama-era Title IX policies being revived were creating a "constitutional and regulatory mess." The letter also said that Lhamon played "a crucial role in creating this problem."
Lhamon recently made remarks about using her department to go after book challenges at a DOE event with the Center for Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships (CFBNP). Biden resurrected the CFBNP in 2021.
The event, accessible only by registering with EventBrite, was titled, “Free To Learn: Inclusion, Rights, and Accommodations for Students of All Faiths and None Conference Resources.”
Joining Lhamon at the event was DOJ Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke with LaWanda Toney, DOE Senior Advisor to Secretary Cardona as moderator.
During her remarks, Lhamon said OCR is "very eager" to enforce its authority over school districts that try to remove books objected to by parents by cutting off federal funds.
“We are very eager to use that tool, just as we are to use any of the other tools that we use,” said Lhamon. “We have recently entered into a resolution agreement with a school district based on a hostile environment that we were concerned had followed from removal of books from classroom library shelves, and we are investigating other cases of that type now.”
She did not name the book titles and justified that type of action by saying book removals create a “hostile environment for students.”
“If a school operates a hostile environment based on religion, based on race, national origin, shared ancestry or sex or disability, we have jurisdiction to address it,” said Lhamon.
She went on to add, “If a campus operates a hostile environment based on those protected characteristics, it violates the law and we are prepared to enforce, and ultimately our tool is that we will take away your federal funds if you hurt a kid.”
Lhamon said OCR initiates an investigation to see if the “hostile environment” exists and if “negotiations” are not successful, OCR would then pull federal dollars if the district doesn’t comply with OCR’s demands.