COVID cash meant to get kids back on track took surprising detour in blue-state school district
Hundreds of thousands of dollars in pandemic-era federal relief funding, including money intended to help students recover from learning loss, instead went toward "anti-racism" training for teachers and administrators in Albuquerque Public Schools.
The district approved $336,500 in American Rescue Plan funds in 2021 for training tied to the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond (PISAB), while accounting records obtained by America First Legal show APS ultimately spent nearly $700,000 on the training program.
School district officials told Fox News Digital they could not confirm the spending or how much came from federal COVID relief funds because they did not have immediate access to the records.
PISAB, which has received grants from George Soros' Open Society Foundations, has distributed training materials instructing "White folks" to "learn how [they] became white" and defining race as a "specious classification of human beings created by Europeans (whites)" to assign human worth and social status and maintain "power and privilege."
At APS, the programming included "Community Conversations," an introductory course centered on "core equity and anti-racism principles," as well as "Introduction to Undoing Racism" and a multi-day "Undoing Racism" workshop.
The training was delivered through the Anti-Racism Training Institute of the Southwest (ARTI), which had a 23-year relationship with PISAB.
The effort reached hundreds of district employees after initially focusing on school leadership. During the 2020-21 school year, APS principals and assistant principals participated in "Community Conversations," a course ARTI "specifically designed" for the district which incorporated PISAB’s organizing principles.
By July 2022, at least 721 APS staff members, ranging from teachers to senior district officials, had attended an ARTI training, according to records obtained by AFL.
"Leftist groups infiltrate schools because they know that they will have the opportunity to shape and control children's minds and social behavior," Bobby Crossin, counsel at America First Legal, said in a statement. "Here, the Albuquerque Public Schools took money intended by Congress to help students harmed by government lockdowns, and spent it on Critical Race Theory indoctrination sessions."
Julie Levin, senior counsel at America First Legal, said the group's concerns centered in part on the use of pandemic relief money at a time when schools were trying to help students recover from COVID-era disruptions.
"You had all of this money that Congress was giving to school districts to get children back on track after the COVID pandemic," Levin told Fox News Digital. "Instead of using that money to help the students, they were using it to pay for these anti-racism trainings."
"What was happening was taxpaying dollars were being used to pay for training sessions that were supposed to be espousing anti-racism, but were actually being used to indoctrinate the teachers and administrators with respect to racism," Levin continued.
The records show APS had even bigger plans for the program, proposing nearly $1 million in DEI training through 2024 that would reach nearly 2,000 people each year.
District officials later considered extending the effort beyond employees and directly to students.
In fall 2022, APS officials proposed adding "a student component to our equity/anti-racism model," which would have involved 20 to 30 students per school at up to 10 middle and high schools, according to internal memos obtained by AFL.
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The proposal envisioned first introducing participating students to "foundational equity/anti-racism principles" before having them develop projects of their own.
APS, however, told Fox News Digital the student component was never implemented.
The district's relationship with ARTI continued after the student proposal. In 2023, ARTI provided APS with a $27,000 estimate for in-person "Undoing Racism" training.
APS defended its use of PISAB and ARTI trainings, saying the programs were intended to help improve student outcomes.
"We haven’t received criticism about this," a spokesperson for the district wrote in an email to Fox News Digital. "But generally speaking, we used the program to help with attendance and academic achievement for students."
The training highlighted in Albuquerque is also part of a greater effort, according to Levin, who said PISAB continues to offer classes in cities including Seattle, Washington, D.C., Atlanta and Brooklyn,
"The People's Institute to this day is offering these classes throughout the United States," Levin said. "All you have to do is go to their website and see that month by month there's the calendar of these training classes that they are offering either directly in person, virtually, or through third parties."
"America First Legal will continue exposing where public-school dollars are being diverted away from our children’s education toward ideological programs that divide Americans by race and reshape our schools around an insidious political agenda," Levin said.
Fox News Digital reached out to PISAB for comment.