Virginia district spent $34K on critical race theory coaching for administrators, documents show

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Newly unveiled documents from Virginia's Loudoun County Public Schools show the district paid more than $34,000 for 55 hours of critical race theory coaching last year and slides contrasting "White Individualism" with "Color Group Collectivism."

The documents, obtained through a freedom of information request from a Loudoun parent, show a framework for "culturally responsive" teaching from the Equity Collaborative, an equity consulting firm that offers courses on critical race theory.

Ian Prior, a former Justice Department official with children in the district and executive director of Fight For Schools, said a parent volunteering for the group had filed the public record request.

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He took issue with a number of bullet points in the presentation and highlighted them.

"What we're seeing here is making assumptions about everybody and their life situation based on race," he said. 

One slide focuses heavily on Black and Latino issues, but the presentation as a whole makes no mention of other minority groups, including Asian Americans, who have the largest minority presence in Loudoun.

"Under ‘Establishing Inclusion’ and ‘Developing a Positive Attitude,’ every culture is excluded except for Black Americans and Latino Americans," Shawntel Cooper told Fox News Thursday evening. "We shouldn’t be excluding anyone."

Cooper is the mother of two biracial students in Loudoun schools. She’s been outspoken at school board meetings against critical race theory and other progressive programs that she says have no place in schools.

"They’re there to learn," she said. "The school board needs to keep religion, sexuality and politics out of school."

"The second slide that really bugged me, under ‘White Individualism,’ there is an emphasis on white individuals that all they do is think about themselves, or the ‘Color Group Collectivism,’ it emphasized that they’re just worried about the other person or how their needs affect others…they’re placing the child in a category." 

And she said that as an African American, she did not relate to the traits listed on the "Color Group Collectivism" slide, which eschews independence and "is associated with shared property," as opposed to the "private property" of "White Individualism."

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"My uncle taught me if I have two hands, two feet – you work hard," she said. "That’s always been a trait in my family. You work hard; you get what you want."

The district has maintained that it does not teach critical race theory in the classroom for any of its students, and LCPS spokesman Wayde Bayard told Fox News the newly unveiled documents were shown to "a small group of Loudoun County Public Schools administrators as part of a training on the various schools of thought involved in equity work."

He was out of the office going into the July Fourth weekend and said he could not immediately provide materials on the other programs shown to those administrators.

When asked why administrators were being trained on critical race theory if the district had no plans to introduce the controversial curriculum to students, he invoked Gen. Mark Milley’s recent congressional testimony.

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"You study many different schools of thought and philosophies so that you have an understanding of the world," he said. "CRT has been around for 45 years. It is one of the many schools of thought on race relations."

Still, Cooper questioned the district’s motive.

"We have to continue to ask ourselves, why are they pushing this?" she said. Why are they teaching the teachers critical race theory? What happens to a child when you keep telling them that they are oppressed or the oppressor? Their dreams are rendered out of reach."

Teaching CRT, she said, is just like teaching racism – "with more racism."