California School Spends $250K on “Woke Kindergarten”

An elementary school in the San Francisco Bay area of California spent a staggering quarter of a million dollars in federal funds on a program to implement self-described “woke” ideas in kindergarten.

According to Fox News, Grassbrook Elementary School in Hayward, California spent $250,000 to enlist the services of a for-profit organization called “Woke Kindergarten,” with the intent of training teachers to indoctrinate students with far-left ideas. But two years after the program was initiated, student test scores at the school have gotten even worse.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that over the last two years, math and reading scores have dropped by 4%. Less than 12% of all students at the school can read at their grade’s level, while less than 4% can do math at their grade’s level.

In response to the report, Hayward Unified School District Superintendent Jason Reimann defended the decision to enlist the controversial group, claiming that the purpose of hiring “Woke Kindergarten” was not to improve test scores, but rather to boost attendance. He said that it was a success in that regard, claiming that attendance at the school has gone up by 20%.

“Helping students feel safe and whole is part and parcel of academic achievement. I get that it’s more money than we would have liked to have spent,” Reimann said in a statement.  “We are in favor 100% of abolishing systems of oppression where they hold our students back. What I do believe is we should pick providers based on their work and how effective they are.”

The website for “Woke Kindergarten” describes itself as a group “supporting children, families, educators and organizations in their commitment to abolitionist early education and pro-black and queer and trans liberation.” It also lists “Woke” words of the day, including “ceasefire” and “abolish,” as well as “Woke Wonderings” such as questioning the “legitimacy of the Supreme Court,” and abolishing such institutions as the police, the military, and even money.

“If the United States defunded the Israeli military,” one of the group’s “Woke Wonderings” asked, “how could this money be used to rebuild Palestine?”

“Our reading scores are low,” said one anonymous Glassbrook teacher. The $250,000 spent on the group “could have gotten us a reading interventionist” instead.

“It slowly became very apparent if you were a dissenting voice that it’s not what they wanted to hear,” the teacher added.