In recent years, parental rights organization Parents Defending Education has uncovered how school districts across the country have been indoctrinating students in topics surrounding race, gender, and sexuality. One way schools do this is through organizations like Panorama Education, which provides schools with resources about race and “social-emotional learning.”
In several school districts, officials utilize Panorama to teach staff and students. In Massachusetts, one school district paid the organization over $90,000 for surveys and training. Now, PDE has revealed that another school district spent hundreds of thousands on these kinds of materials.
Last last month, PDE obtained documents that show that Naperville Community Unit School District 203 in Illinois is paying Panorama Education over $270,000 for surveys and services for students, staff, and families. PDE received several contracts between the district and Panorama dating back to 2022.
The first contract obtained by PDE is dated July 1, 2022. This contract included “student surveys,” “teacher and staff surveys,” “intervention tracking,” and “professional development.” According to PDE, the school district paid Panorama $63,000 for the company’s services over the next year.
The next contract, dated July 1, 2023, includes these same materials and cost the same amount.
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A third contract, dated for July 1, 2024, is for a term of three years, ending on June 30, 2027. According to PDE, This contract includes “student surveys,” “teacher and staff surveys,” and “professional development” and is for $48,984 per year and $146,952 for the whole three years.
Questions from the Panorama surveys that were provided to students mention the following (via PDE):
How often do teachers encourage you to learn about people from different races, ethnicities, or cultures?
[...]
How often do you think about what someone of a different race, ethnicity, or culture experiences?
How confident are you that students at your school can have honest conversations with each other about race?
At your school, how often are you encouraged to think more deeply about race-related topics?
How comfortable are you sharing your thoughts about race-related topics with other students at your school?
How often do students at your school have important conversations about race, even when they might be uncomfortable?
How well does your school help students speak out against racism?
What is the most important thing your school can keep doing to support students of different races, ethnicities, and cultures?
Questions from the Panorama surveys that were provided to staff ask the following (via PDE):
How often do adults at your school have important conversations about race, even when they might be uncomfortable?
When there are major news events related to race, how often do adults at your school talk about them with each other?
How well does your school help staff speak out against racism?
At your school, how valuable are the equity-focused professional development opportunities?
When it comes to promoting culturally responsive practices, how helpful are your colleagues’ ideas for improving your practice?
How often do professional development opportunities help you explore new ways to promote equity in your practice?
Overall, how effective has your school administration been in helping you advance student equity?
“Instead of focusing on improving academic standards for students, school districts like this one are choosing to shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars to so-called consultants to push racially charged material to children,” Michelle Exner, a senior advisor at PDE, told Townhall.
“Families should be outraged that district leaders are choosing to waste their tax dollars to push this divisive content. This will do nothing to help student achievement in classrooms,” she added.
Earlier this year, PDE uncovered how the school district openly promoted segregated events for students. The school district pushes staff to join “Equity Affinity Groups,” segregate people based on their characteristics, such as race and sexual orientation.
