San Juan Unified School District received over $175,000 from CAIR in Fiscal Year 2024; district provided Defending Education with unredacted names of refugee students

Key Highlights

• The Form 990 for CAIR’s California chapter revealed that the organization provided the San Juan Unified School District with $175,602 in Fiscal Year 2024.
• Defending Education submitted a public records request seeking all records regarding this funding. The school district provided Defending Education with a list of refugee students with their full names and “home language” completely unredacted.
• Defending Education received partial breakdowns to how the district spent some of the funding.
• Emails revealed that CAIR representatives are in frequent communication with district staff.
• A previous memorandum of understanding revealed that CAIR provided $180,000 to the school district from 2022 to 2023.

Defending Education’s Findings

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is a controversial organization in the United States that reportedly has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. After the terrorist attack against Israel on October 7, 2023, CAIR’s executive director Nihad Awad stated, “I was happy to see people breaking the siege…the people of Gaza have the right to self-defense, have the right to defend themselves, and yes, Israel, as an occupying power, does not have that right to self-defense.” The Form 990 for CAIR’s California chapter revealed that the state chapter provided San Juan Unified School District with $175,602 in Fiscal Year 2024 for “refugee and entrant assistance state/replacement designee administered programs.”

Defending Education submitted a public records request to the school district seeking “all records, documents, and communications pertaining to how and why the district received this funding, how the district spent this funding, and any communications between district officials and CAIR regarding the funding.” The district provided Defending Education with the following records.

On June 5, 2024, CAIR gave the district a “Sacramento County Afghan support grant” for $47,627.50 for “IntelliBricks STEM Program and Chromebooks for Newcomer Students.” The breakdown of funding used from this grant was $34,091.50 for “Chromebooks for Newcomer Students” and $13,536 for “Robotics and STEM Enrichment” from IntelliBricks. This document notably included a list of refugee students within the school district along with their full names and “home language,” which included Arabic, Dari, Farsi, Pashto, Russian, and Ukrainian. Defending Education has redacted the names of these students and assigned staff from the document.

On July 5, 2024, CAIR gave the district a “Sacramento County Afghan support grant” for $39,803.20 for “Chromebooks for Newcomer Students, Willow Way Tutoring, and Indirect Costs.” The breakdown of funding used from this grant was $15,352.38 for “Chromebooks for Newcomer Students,” $15,000 for “Online Multilingual Tutoring Program” from Willow Way Tutoring, $7,022.87 for “indirect costs,” $1,884.81 for “Robotics and STEM Enrichment” from IntelliBricks, $475.55 for “General Office Supplies” from Amazon, $60 for a “Resource FAIR” for personal salaries, and $7.59 for “Payroll Taxes on Resource Fair Extra Time” for payroll taxes and benefits.

Defending Education received communications between CAIR and the school district. In an email dated May 22, 2024, a CAIR representative notably told district staff: “Along with your monthly invoice reports you are required to submit the participants served report.” A district employee then stated in an email to another person within the district: “We are using CAIR to pay for the attached IntelliBricks invoices. How do I get a list of the participants served?”

The following IntelliBricks invoices were also provided.

In an email dated March 13, 2024, a “youth coordinator” for CAIR reached out to the director of “family engagement and partnership development” for the district. The CAIR representative stated: “Thank you for inviting us to Starr King’s parent night and the SJUSD Strategic Core planning. I really appreciated being a part of the planning committee and hearing from parents and their families.” The CAIR representative then stated: “I am reaching out to you regarding the 6-week Leadership Development program offered by CAIR for school-aged students. We have successfully launched the program at Starr King and are looking to expand it to other schools.”

The district’s director of family engagement and partnership development then responded by thanking the CAIR representative for “reaching out to share about the Leadership Development program
CAIR has been providing at Starr King” because “it sounds like a terrific opportunity for students!” Then another CAIR representative stated: “We are currently in the process of drafting a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), which we will send to you shortly for review.”

In an email dated May 7, 2024, a representative of the school district replied back regarding the MOU: “We appreciate your partnership. I am wondering if your organization would be interested in
providing support for our Newcomer Middle School Program.”

In an email dated August 26, 2024, a CAIR representative reached out to invite district staff to “our 20th Annual Banquet being held at the SAFE Convention Center on September 21st.” The CAIR representative then said: “I also wanted to thank you both for all the work you have led for the community. Given our past partnership and collaborations, it would mean a lot to us to have San Juan’s presence felt in our milestone celebration.”

In an email dated July 2, 2024, the “interim executive director” for the Sacramento Valley / Central California chapter of CAIR sent an email to several people including district staff that started with “as-Salamu ‘alaykum and greetings of peace all.” The purpose of the email was to serve as a “friendly reminder of our final expense report for this grant.”

In an email dated June 4, 2024, a “special projects manager” for CAIR reached out to the district asking for “data analysis for the month of April and May for Sac County” and to “provide the following information at your earliest convenience this week.” The following district information was then provided for April and May of that year of “total individuals and families that were provided services.”

• Total youth that attended Youth workshops: 12
• Total individuals that received case management and navigation services: 30
• Total outreach events conducted by your organization: 42

In an email thread that started February 29, 2024, a CAIR representative stated that the organization was “working on a new proposal to present to Sac County for 2H’24 as an opportunity to continue and
expand our Afghan Refugee support work that we initially launched in 2022.” In a later email dated March 5, 2024, the CAIR representative stated: “This is a formal proposal to Sac County as a follow up on the last 2 years of this grant, requesting a 3rd year (and potentially multi-year) extension and increase of funds.” This person was talking with a district representative about submitting a proposal.

Defending Education additionally received a memorandum of understanding between CAIR’s Sacramento Valley / Central California chapter and the school district for the “Sacramento County Afghan support Grant” dated October 27, 2022. The project’s start date was August 1, 2022, and ended on June 30, 2023, for this specific grant. The memorandum explained that the grant was for $180,000.