Meanwhile, the policies that your group has advocated, such as the End Dei portal, are a chilling speech for teachers in public schools.
Transcription:
Leila Fadel, host:
For years, Sarah Inama had a poster hung in her Idaho classroom, a poster that encouraged her sixth grade students to be children. All are welcome here, he said, in bright and multicolored letters.
Sarah Inama: He has images of different tons of skin underneath that have small hearts in the palm of their hands.
Fadel: He got it in a supply store in the classroom, and had never attracted attention, even recent.
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Inama: My director and vice president approached me. They told me they had to go through school and have posters that have controversial messages.
Fadel: when he pressed them on what was controversial …
Inama: They told me that teachers are not allowed to have posters that show their personal or political opinions about things, and this now was seen as a personal opinion.
Fadel: Today, in the state of the first amendment: the right from which all rights flow, distenseing diversity, equity and inclusion in public schools.
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Fadel: Sarah did not take the poster for a long time.
Inama: I just woke up and thought, I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s so bad. I felt so disgusting feeling complacent in that. And I only entered a Saturday with my husband and my baby and put it again, and I sent an email to my director to let him know.
Fadel: What did the director say?
Inama: He came to my classroom, and said it is the insubordination of consultants. After putting it again, one of our district staff, our academic director, told me that the political environment flows and flows, and what may not have been controversial of three or six or nine months acid will now be considered acid.
Fadel: In a statement, the school district confirmed the Inama count of what happened, saying that they are not the words but the colors of the letters and the different skin tones of the hands they, cite, “decided potentials with respect to the specific ones.”
Inama: When they tolerated me, it is not not that it is not not to express opinions of difference, there are only two opinions of that poster. Or you think everyone is welcome or not. He was as surprised, as special in the base of skin tone.
Fadel: Are they still in your classroom?
Inama: mm-Hmm.
Fadel: And are you still teaching at school?
Inama: mm-Hmm.
Fadel: Now, she is not the only teacher who feels guarded by the search for diversity, equity and inclusion. When we asked him, our readers and listeners, if he felt freer or lighter at this time, an oregon teacher wrote us. She was so worried about speaking that she only asked to go through her first initial, E.
E: right where I live and where I teach it is a really small community, and I am definitely worried about being reported.
Fadel: What is concerned there is a new portal of the Department of Education called End Dei, where you can inform any case of lessons about diversity, equity and inclusion. When he first learned of the news, he thought it could not be real. Then she looked at him.
E: And I was like, Oh my God. As, literally, it only says, students, parents, teachers, you can inform when you see instances. Then I thought, oh, my God.
Fadel: E began to run.
E: Immediately, I kept thinking, what did I say in class today? What was requested today in class? What could be tasks out of context in class today? Who is angry with me right now to change their seats or something? Could anyone use this against me for something I have done in the recently? So I was quite scared.
Fadel: Can you describe how this type of classroom teaching behavior?
E: I mean, the next day, the children ask me questions. There are so many times when I only have to tell you that I cannot answer that question, or simply change the subject. Or I think about how I am going to say it in a way to provide them with the information they need, but also in a way that the butt will cover me.
Fadel: A year ago, did you feel the same?
E: No, I didn’t. At this time, in our current environment and in our current political place, it is becoming easier and easier for certain people to be entitled to freedom of expression and others have their own. And I think it is just a great change in what is an acceptable speech and what is now considered, you know, a problem of Dei report.
Fadel: If we were doing this interview about freedom of expression a year ago, would you have given me your full name?
E: Yes, I would have done it.
Fadel: The Department of Education has not responded to our repeated requests of comments on how this portal works or what the penalty teachers reported. So we communicated with a group that supported the End Dei portal, a right -wing defense group called Moms for Liberty. It was founded in the middle of the Covid pandemic by mothers who felt unheard of and exclusive by school administrators and members of the school board on objections to masking policies and school closures. One of his co -founders is Tina Descovich, a mother from Florida who says that the portal was created to meet a need.
Tina Descovich: Our parents throughout the country and people who are not members, send us an email that they find in their school districts, practices, policies they find with respect. And there really was nothing place to inform that.
Fadel: If I could give me an example of the type of complaint that you think the portal of Dei would like to drive.
DESCOVICH: The things I have returned that I know that people have forwarded in the dei portal are lessons in which they divide children by race and call black children to the victims or the oppressed; White children are the oppressors. So that would be absolutely that someone should go on the Dei portal.
Fadel: An executive order on, quotes, “Radical indoctrination in education K-12” to end the diversity, equity and inclusion in public schools a similar claim. But we could not find examples in public schools of lessons where the children were physically divided by the race, as Decovich described. Moms For Liberty pointed out a Secondary School of Public Arts in Florida who planned separate meetings for color students and white students four years ago. He later canceled them and apologized.
Now, getting rid of Dei is not the only problem that drives mothers for freedom. The group has pressed to prohibit books, in large part about racism, discrimination, sexuality or LGBTQ rights. Members publish an anti-LGBTQ rhetoric. And at a chapter meeting three years ago, a member talked about the award for a school librarian. All this is why the South Poverty Law Center labeled the group’s extremist in 2023. In pandemic apogee, it was a loaded environment. The parents shouted at the members of the School Board.
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Unidentified crowd: (singing) shame for you. What a shame.
Fadel: There was an increase in violent threats against school staff and members of the School Board, such as this threat.
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Unidentified person: he knows that his home address is on the Internet, right? That could be a bit scary.
Fadel: What led to the National Association of the School Board to ask the Biden Administration to intervene. Moms For Liberty has framed the FBI investigation of these violent threats against members of the school board as a motivated policy campaign to silence parents and organizations such as their own. Again, Descavich.
Decovich: Parents were just appearing, trying to express their opinions, sometimes, you know, it is not really so pleasant for the members of the school board. They were angry about the things that were happening with their children. But in no way, the form or the form if they had had the Department of Justice, the Federal Government, which came them.
Fadel: You know, it is no secret that the Southern Poverty Law Center and other organizations see Moms for Liberty as an extremist organization, as an extreme right organization that Real is in opposition to LGBTQS, Thacricy For Book. Inclusive. What are you doing of that and how does that connect with what I was describing?
DESCOVICH: I and my co -founder served in a Board of Public Schools for four years, we dedicate my life to that. We believe in the public education system. We believe in the foundational principles of the United States and in our government. We are not anti -government. But we absolutely have the right, guaranteed in the first amendment, to address government officials when we believe they are not on the right path.
Fadel: In just a few years, he has changed a lot for Moms for Liberty. With Trump’s choice, White House doors are open to the group.
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President Donald Trump: Thank you very much.
Fadel: The members were at the signing of executive orders, one to prohibit transgender athletes of women’s and girls sports; Another to dismantle the Department of Education.
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Trump: And it sounds strange, right? Education Department: We will eliminate it. And everyone knows that it is correct.
Fadel: The right -wing defense group not only feels freer to speak these days, but also seem to have the president’s ear.
DESCOVICH: Many of these executive orders talk about the struggle that our organization and many other organizations have experience in the last four and five years. I hope the government is much more open. I think people in the real administration because seeing changes that will open more to the government, and that is good for all Americans: left, right, republican, Democrat. I have high hopes.
Fadel: You know, I think there were people who felt that what I was reading was dangerous for certain Americans. I wonder, at this time, if it is freedom of expression for all or simply freedom of expression for some.
DESCOVICH: Well, the Constitution of the United States of America guarantees freedom of expression for all. And if someone in the United States is being silenced in the way we were silenced in recent years, they must do the things we do. They need to organize. They need to request their government. We have filed demands, and we have spent victorious because the legal system in the United States works. It can take time, but it works. You know, I am willing to be with someone, anyone, for their right to speak.
Fadel: But they are the policies for which your group has advocated, such as the End Dei portal, relaxing the speech of some teachers in public schools.
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Fadel: Morning Edition invited the Secretary of Education Linda McMahon or the vice president, JD Vance, to sit with us for a conversation about freedom of expression. We have not had news, and that invitation is still open.
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