Last year, I left my job as a public high school teacher in Salinas, California, after 5 years. I love helping students realize their vast potential. But it became clear to me that school officials were obsessed with left-wing indoctrination, and that dissenting voices—like my own—were not welcome.
Right now, public education officials are doing their best to convince concerned parents that an ideology that falsely insists America was founded on systemic racism and that our institutions still discriminate against black Americans like me is not being taught to children. Well, I’m here to tell you those officials are not being truthful.
In the 2020 fall semester, I noticed something strange: Many of my English-as-a-second-language students were failing a mandatory ethnic studies course. Since teachers at the school used the same online platform for lesson plans and learning materials, I was able to access the ethnic studies lessons. While I expected to see plenty of America-bashing, what I found legitimately shocked me: Just about every single lesson had some element of critical race theory in it.
Children were learning about the so-called four I’s of oppression (institutional, internalized, ideological, and interpersonal). The course syllabus said students would use colored strings to “rank” their different identities to create “intersectional rainbows.” And the class even included a “privilege quiz” instructing students to determine how marginalized—or privileged—they were.
These aren’t just general proposals about things students might learn or supplemental notes for faculty use. These are the lessons the students were actually taught. To be clear, this is nothing short of far-left brainwashing of our young people from start to finish.
Left-wing activists in California have not been shy in advocating for discrimination to address supposed institutional racism. We saw this in 2020 with Proposition 16, a ballot initiative that would have allowed state and local government bodies to discriminate based on race in public hiring, contracting, and school admissions. Fortunately, Californians overwhelmingly rejected this racist policy, but progressives have not stopped trying to ram their beliefs down people’s throats—even if it means indoctrinating children with radical racial propaganda.
Parents have a right to know what their children are learning. Thankfully, a parent advocate was able to obtain the ethnic studies curriculum—helping to shine a light on what was really happening in the class —but the words “Critical Race Theory” had been removed. I took action and wrote a letter to the school board protesting the curriculum. That letter was read aloud at a school board meeting, but by the time the next school meeting rolled around, anti-CRT comments had been banned.
When it came to my beliefs, I was in the minority on my campus, and my district is not very kind to people who don’t agree with the agenda they’re trying to push on students. Let me put it this way: If you’re wondering whether Critical Race Theory is a good thing for our country, try speaking out against it and see how people treat you. For me, that was when the real racism started.
So, I left my job, and my husband and I moved to Florida. At long last, I feel accepted and I am opening an online K-12 school, Exodus Institute (thinkexodus.org). But I still care deeply for the students and families in California who are being held hostage by public school officials and their agenda.
The first step in empowering families in California—and across the country—to fight back against the radical teachings of CRT in the classroom is to arm them with knowledge. Not only are public schools force-feeding these lies to students, but they’re also keeping parents in the dark.
But parents deserve the truth about what their children are learning. That’s why it’s so important to fix the system by requiring public schools to post a listing of their learning materials online. The Academic Transparency Act, a reform developed by the Goldwater Institute, would do just that, and this common-sense legislation would minimize public education officials’ ability to mislead families about what’s truly going on in the classroom.
Public schools are trying to divide the next generation of Americans based on race. There’s a word for that—racism. But parents—and teachers who truly care about their students—can fight back. They can demand transparency.
Kali Fontanilla is an educator with 15 years of experience teaching in public and Christian schools. She has launched a new online school at thinkexodus.org.
