ROCHESTER, Minn. – Rochester school administrators are grappling with a 41-page request from a right-wing group that purports to represent parents with doubts about how race is treated in the curriculum. The interim school superintendent, Kent Pekel, said the request is overwhelming. It asks for every document from every school over two year related to race, social justice, culture and social justice. The requesting group, Equality in Education, asked \for information from range of sources, including curriculum, conferences and seminars teachers have been able to attend, PowerPoint decks, emails and text messages on cell phones. It’s like a vacuum cleaner. Further, Pekel said, the request is subjective, which makes assembling the material difficult. For example, he said the request asks for curriculum details with a sociological or cultural theme. “Those are highly subjective,” Pekel said. “That’s not really just data production. It’s review and interpretation.”
Equality in Education profile
Who is this Equality i Education organization? It’s attorney, Nick Morgan of Minneapolis, won’t say. Morgan described them vaguely to the Rochester Post-Bulletin as “a group of concerned parents and taxpayers.” These parents, he said, have concerns about the quality and content of the school district’s curriculum. “Previous informal efforts by our members to obtain information from School District administration and staff were ‘not responsive,” the attorney said. He was not specific. Where is the money coming from to pay the group’s legal bills for the action? Nobody’s talking.
Shadowy affiliations
The Equality in Education is part of a shadowy movement that has staged disruptions of School Board meetings and harassed school board members in several states. The movement is a manifestation of the emboldened Trump era white supremacy movement. There are ties with groups advocating social disruption to undermine confidence social institutions like schools.
Pekel. Interim Superintendent Pekel estimated that fulfill every aspect of the Equality in Education group’s request. would cost the school district $900,000. Said Pekel: “It just eats up hours and hours and hours of time during a global pandemic when we ought to be focused on not only Covid but reading and math.”