The Ministry of Justice (DOJ) has spent more than $100 million over the past four years on educational programs related to restorative justice, social emotional learning, and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), according to a new report.
Parents Defending Education (PDE), a legal advocacy organization that aims to “take back our schools from activists who impose harmful programs,” announced latest revelations on Thursday. The report states that the Department of Justice awarded and distributed $100,113,942 in grants to more than 900 school districts in 36 states between 2021 and 2024.
According to the report, which is the first reported according to the Daily Wire, DOJ spent $45,207,178 on “project proposals that broadly mention restorative practices or social emotional learning,” $32,084,529 was spent on “proposals that discuss diversity, equity, or inclusion or explicitly explain how the project is intended improving outcomes for a specific demographic group” and spent $19,881,347 certification for consultants who “often promote divisive concepts such as critical race theory, critical gender theory, and queer theory.”
The Justice Department reportedly spent $100 million in grants to promote DEI programs in schools. (iStock)
PARENTS DEFENDING EDUCATION FOUNDER CALL BIDEN ADMINISTRATION SPENDING ON DEI IN SCHOOLS A ‘SLAP’
An additional $10,296,100 was spent on proposals to hire new administrators, including a “restorative justice facilitator.”
Some highlights included nearly $2 million given to the Minnesota Department of Education to “create safe learning environments that incorporate anti-racism and anti-oppression practices” and nearly $1 million given to Ocean County, New Jersey to reduce violence while equalizing ” teasing” ” to “oppression and all forms of violence.”
The report also highlighted the DOJ’s STOP School Violence program, which the group warned aims to “improve school climate” by shifting from disciplinary measures to “social emotional learning.”
“More often than not, when schools refer to ‘improving school climate,’ they mean replacing exclusive discipline with restorative practices and social emotional learning,” PDE wrote.
Parents Defending Education (PDE) published a similar report on the Ministry of Education last month. (Getty Images/ istock/ Dzmitry Dzemidovich)
It continues: “Exclusionary discipline removes the disruptor from the classroom, allowing the rest of the class to continue learning. Restorative practices, on the other hand, often disrupt instruction for multiple students, as both the perpetrator(s) and victim(s) of the incident come together to talk about what happened and ‘repair the damage’.”
PDE clarified that the numbers are only based on available data with some counties with multiple grants counted only once, saying the true number is “probably much higher.”
“While the Biden administration has claimed to care about ‘student safety,’ these grants underscore that at the end of the day, federal bureaucrats have made a deliberate choice to prioritize ideology and pet projects over protecting America’s school children, using the tax dollars of hard-working citizens,” Founder and PDE President Nicole Neily told Fox News Digital.
Fox News Digital has reached out to the DOJ for comment.
Last month, PDE published a similar report stating that the Ministry of Education spend over a billion dollars on grants advancing DEI’s mental health recruitment, programming, and training in America’s schools by 2021.
Parents who defend education have found some scholarship that promotes some form of “restorative justice” or “social-emotional learning.” (Fox News Digital)
According to the report, $489,883,797 was spent on race-based employment grants; $343,337,286 went to general DEI programming; and $169,301,221 went to DEI-based mental health training and programming, for a total of $1,002,522,304.81.
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Fox News’ Kristine Parks contributed to this report.
