She and 15 other students had started at the college that fall in the hopes of studying to become highly effective educators. Many of them planned to return to their rural communities after graduation to help fill a gaping teacher shortage. They were all recipients of full-tuition scholarships through the , a three-year, federally funded project meant to diversify and increase the number of teachers in Nebraska and Kansas.

What they learned that February afternoon has left many of them reeling and questioning what comes next: Abrupt federal cuts from the Trump administration — meant to root out ��෡��” practices — resulted in every one of them losing their scholarships, effective immediately. They’d be able to finish out the spring term, but as of May, the money would be gone. Of the 16 students, 14 are first-time freshmen, just beginning their higher education journeys.

“I knew we were going to get told something terrible, but I couldn’t put a stop to it,” said Vianey, who asked to be identified by her first name only because of concerns that speaking out in the media could have negative ramifications. “To me, this scholarship was my way out. It was my way to be something. To contradict all the odds that were placed on me,” she added as her voice broke and she began to cry.

“I’ve wanted to be a teacher my whole life. Now, with all of this happening, I don’t know if I can recover.”

Amanda Morales, associate professor at UNL and principal investigator on the RAÍCES project, said telling her group of undergraduate students about the funding cuts was “by far, one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.”

“When you see young people’s dreams just shattered in an instant because of something you said or this message you had to give, how do you bounce back from that?” she asked. “What is happening to these projects and these programs is unprecedented, and it is really inhumane. There’s no other word for it.”

RAÍCES, whose name is derived from a Spanish word meaning “roots,” was one of many teacher preparation programs that suddenly lost their funding when the Education Department canceled more than in grants. The programs, meant to increase the number of teachers in high-need and hard-to-staff schools, were accused by the department of discriminating against certain populations and embracing “divisive ideologies” which aligned with diversity, equity and inclusion and “social justice activism.”

Eight attorneys general have since filed alleging the cancellation of the congressionally approved grants was unlawful. On Monday, a federal judge ordered the administration to in those eight states, which don’t include Kansas or Nebraska. Three teacher prep programs have also filed  

The scholarship, whose name stands for Re-envisioning Action and Innovation through Community Collaborations for Equity across Systems, had been promised $3.9 million through a grant, which sought to train more highly effective educators. It was housed at UNL and Kansas State University, which were required to match at least 25% of the federal funding.

RAÍCES was designed to be a comprehensive program that addressed the intractable teacher shortage in rural areas from recruiting novices to retaining veterans. It began with a high school-based program called Youth Participatory Action Research, providing students with the opportunity to explore careers in the classroom and investigate problems affecting their own education and communities. A number of students who ultimately received the full undergraduate scholarships, including Vianey, were recruited from this program. 

It also included funding for graduate-level scholarships, mentoring for teachers and ongoing professional development — meant to help educators stay in the profession long term. 

On Feb. 10, at 8:55 p.m., Socorro Herrera, professor and executive director of Kansas State’s Center for Intercultural and Multilingual Advocacy and the project’s lead principal investigator, received an email with an attached letter from the Education Department, telling her the grant would be terminated because it “is inconsistent with, and no longer effectuates, Department priorities.” 

She was shocked. 

“My thought is,” she said, “it’s not ‘department priorities,’ but it is community priorities. It is state priorities. It is the priority of human beings who want to go back into those public schools in which they grew up to give back [and] to be the most highly qualified teacher they can be for all students — but also for students who are like them.”

Morales said the letter and “blanket termination” of all SEED grants “left all of us just reeling with no clarity, no support, no one to call. Even our program officers are inaccessible. We were just left in the lurch — left to just flounder and try to pick up the pieces of this shattered project.”

‘[The] teacher that I wish I had’

Vianey was born in Mexico and came to the U.S. as a toddler with her parents and three siblings. The family spent their first decade or so in Washington state, where Vianey attended school as an English language learner. Even as a kid, Vianey was aware of the shortfalls of her school’s program and the negative impact it had on her and her English learner classmates.

“I just want to be that teacher that I wish I had when I was growing up to others,” she said.

She noted it was particularly challenging to not have any teachers who looked like her or shared her life experiences. At the time, this made her feel like her dream of becoming an educator might not be attainable, a narrative she hopes to combat.

“It gives you a sense of belonging when you see somebody that looks like you in the classroom,” she added.

When Vianey was in high school she moved to Nebraska with her mom, where she attended Lincoln High School and participated in the youth action program, which allowed her to do research on English language programs in her state. Eventually this led her to the RAÍCES scholarship at UNL, where she’s studying secondary education for Spanish, in the hopes of eventually returning to her own high school. 

As of December 2024, Nebraska schools had about , meaning they were staffed by someone other than a fully qualified teacher or were left totally vacant. About half of districts that responded to the state’s request for data reported complete vacancies. 

At roughly the same time, Kansas had almost — an 8%  increase from the previous spring, according to the teacher licensure director for the Kansas State Department of Education.

Nationally there were almost according to the Learning Policy Institute’s most recent analysis, likely a significant undercount because only 30 states and Washington, D.C. publish such data. 

has shown that rural schools face distinct difficulties filling their teaching positions, and that teacher turnover is especially common in high-poverty rural schools. And hiring foreign language and bilingual education teachers is especially hard.

“The money, explicitly and intentionally, was about increasing the number of teachers in rural schools,” said Herrera. 

Vianey had acute ELL teacher shortages in her own district in mind when she decided to apply to RAÍCES. Getting accepted into the full scholarship program “meant everything” to her and to her parents, whose formal education ended after third grade. 

“[My mom] felt like she succeeded and she was finally being able to achieve what she came here to do, and that is to give us a better life,” said Vianey.

‘We’re not rolling over here’

Vianey is among the at least 70 high school students, 26 undergraduates and 40 master’s students across the two universities who have been impacted by the cuts, along with the almost 1,000 teachers in partnering districts who were receiving ongoing education and professional development.

The ripple effects are far-reaching, potentially impacting thousands of students whose chances of getting a highly qualified, fully certified teacher have now been diminished.

When the funding runs out this spring, Tiffaney Locke — a 42-year-old career changer who has spent the past 12 years working in community mental health — will be just two courses shy of her master’s degree. 

She said as a Black student in Kansas City schools, she was able to find success because of educators who believed in her. Her plan was to return to a similar school to be that teacher for kids who look like her. She quit her full-time job to complete what she thought would be a fully funded program and is now scared about what comes next but hopeful that her teaching career is still within reach.

While the population of the scholarship recipients is diverse, the only requirement for application was that students come from one of the six partner districts in Nebraska and Kansas, all identified as difficult to staff and, in most cases, rural. One of the districts they partnered with had almost 120 vacancies.

Of the 16 undergraduates at UNL who were supposed to receive full scholarships — including housing, meal plans and a laptop — one quarter identified as white and half identified as Hispanic or Latino, according to Morales. Three-quarters were first-generation college students and over half came from rural communities. They were all high-achieving high school students and 15 of the 16 had GPAs just over 3.5 in their first semester, well above the program’s 2.0 requirement.

“The fact that the government doesn’t think you’re worthy to be here is tragic,” Morales said.

Morales and Herrera are now scrambling to find external funding, making any attempt they can to keep the program alive, but “this may be the end of the road for many of [the students] because just loans and Pell grants wouldn’t be enough to see them through,” Herrera said.

These across-the-board cuts have also had a chilling effect, she said, making those at the university level scared to speak out for fear of retribution from the federal government. Their concern is not baseless: the Trump administration recently in funding from Columbia University and halted payment on in grants to the University of Maine system.

“Everybody’s in this silent mode, like ‘Don’t call attention to yourself, go under the radar, keep doing the work,’” she added.

But the leaders of RAÍCES aren’t done.

 “We’re not rolling over here,” said Morales. “We’re not tucking our tail and just saying, ‘OK, I guess this is just the way it is.’ We’re fighting on every front we possibly can and [are] continuing to fight up until the very last moment. I’m not giving up.”

And Vianey isn’t quitting either. She wants to send a clear message to the people who took away her scholarship: “It’s not going to stop us from achieving our dreams. We will find a way out … my purpose is to become a teacher — and I’m not going to stop until I’m able to.”

Up first: An order for schools to kill diversity, equity and inclusion — or else. 

Schools and universities were given 14 days to end diversity initiatives or risk losing federal funding. But the order’s vague language, civil rights advocates argue, could have a chilling effect and encourage schools to eliminate everything related to race. |

• Suggesting statewide resistance to the DEI order, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey responded by saying “we are going to stay true to who we are in Massachusetts.” |
• Michigan state Superintendent Michael Rice said a review of Trump’s letter “will take time,” but as of now, the state education department “continues to support diversity in literature, comprehensive history instruction and broad recruitment to Grow Your Own programs for students and support staff to become teachers.” |
• Meanwhile, in Louisiana, state Superintendent of Education Cade Brumley endorsed Trump’s DEI directive, noting in a letter this week that his department is working to “stop inherently divisive concepts, like Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), from infiltrating Louisiana’s K-12 public education system.” |
• Trump’s order applies a broad interpretation of a recent Supreme Court ruling that struck down affirmative action in college admissions and could be leveraged to restrict content taught in classrooms. |
• My colleague Linda Jacobson reported this week on the Education Department’s abrupt decision to terminate $600 million in teacher training grants, many specifically designed to recruit future educators of color, who are underrepresented in the classroom. | The 74

• After PBS scrubbed a video series on LGBTQ history in response to Trump’s DEI orders, the content has a new home: the New York City school district’s website. |
• A new lawsuit by college professors and diversity professionals alleges the order is unconstitutional. “In the United States, there is no king,” they write in their complaint. “In his crusade to erase diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility from our country, President Trump cannot usurp Congress’s exclusive power of the purse, nor can he silence those who disagree with him by threatening them with the loss of federal funds and other enforcement actions.” |
• A coalition of civil rights groups filed suit against the Trump administration on Wednesday, arguing the DEI order infringed on their free speech rights. NAACP Legal Defense Fund President and Director-Counsel Janai Nelson said that “beyond spreading inaccurate, dehumanizing and divisive rhetoric,” Trump’s orders tie the hands of organizations that are “providing critical services to people who need them most.” |

More from Washington: Trump’s executive order to end birthright citizenship for children whose parents are undocumented or on work visas remains blocked after an appeals court declined to reinstate it — and paved the way for a potential battle in the Supreme Court. |

• A majority of Amerians in a recent poll opposed ending birthright citizenship and another Trump order allowing immigration agents to make arrests in churches, schools and other sensitive locations once considered off limits. |

Two federal courts have blocked a Trump executive order that sought to restrict transgender youth from receiving gender-affirming care, with a Washington judge writing the directive violated the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause and disregarded Congress. |

‘It looks like a zoo’: Children are among the nearly 100 migrants who were recently deported from the U.S. to Panama and placed in a detention camp with “fenced cages” on the outskirts of the jungle. |

Trump issued an order on Thursday to end “all taxpayer-funded benefits for illegal aliens.” But undocumented immigrants generally don’t qualify for federal benefits with one major exception: In 1982, the Supreme Court found that all children, regardless of their immigration status, are entitled to a free K-12 education. |

More in the news

A judge has ordered the Milwaukee school district to station police officers on campuses within 10 days or face sanctions. Amid a dispute over school police funding, the district has not complied for more than a year with a state law that mandates police in schools. |

School police in Texas have opened an investigation into the suicide death of an 11-year-old girl after her mother said the middle school student suffered pervasive bullying from classmates who claimed her family was in the country illegally and threatened to have them deported. |

Sandy Hook Promise was credited with helping to thwart an 18-year-old Indiana student’s plot to commit a mass school shooting on Valentine’s Day. Police reports note a tipster to the nonprofit’s anonymous reporting system said “their friend has access to an AR15 and has just ordered a bulletproof vest.” |

Missouri public schools would be required to develop cardiac emergency response plans and equip campuses with automated external defibrillators under bipartisan legislation. |

Fewer than half of Texas school districts are in compliance with a 2023 law requiring armed security at every campus. |

Graduates of a Kent, Connecticut, boarding school have sued the institution on allegations its former IT administrator accessed financial records, medical information, photos and videos from hundreds of former students and employees. “There are potentially many hundreds of former Kent School students and employees who are victims of [the school official’s] personal invasion and sexual exploitation,” the complaint alleges. |

Kept in the Dark

For a recent investigation for The 74 and Wired, I fell down a dark web rabbit hole and chronicled more than 300 school cyberattacks in the last five years — and revealed the degree to which school leaders in virtually every state repeatedly provide false assurances to students, parents and staff about the security of their sensitive information. 

This week, I highlighted my investigation into a ransomware attack on the Minneapolis school district — an “encryption event,” according to school officials — which led to the widespread exposure of students’ sensitive data. What the district told the public and the FBI, documents I obtained through public records requests show, differed drastically. 

ICYMI @The74

• Students Fearful After Posts Threaten to Report Undocumented Peers to ICE

• Parents, Medical Providers, Vaccine Experts Brace for RFK Jr.’s HHS Takeover

• ‘Evict Elon’: Teachers Union, Others Sue to Stop DOGE’s Access to Ed Dept. Data

• After Declaring NAEP Off-Limits, Education Department Cancels Upcoming Test

Emotional support

If Kathy Moore’s pup Sinead knows one thing, it’s how to build a good fort to ride out these cold winter days. 

As Texas lawmakers wrap up the first week of the 2025 legislative session, Gov. has signaled another public education priority he wants on their list: banning diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in K-12 public schools.

“No taxpayer dollars will be used to fund DEI in our schools,” Abbott said in a post on the social media platform X on Thursday, using the acronym for diversity efforts. “Schools must focus on fundamentals of education, not indoctrination.”

Barring DEI efforts at K-12 schools would expand a statewide ban for colleges and universities approved two years ago. The governor’s office did not immediately respond to questions from The Texas Tribune on Friday seeking more details on Abbott’s remarks.

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His comments came in response to posted by Corey DeAngelis, a senior fellow at the American Culture Project, allegedly showing a Richardson school district official answering questions from an individual who recorded the interaction and asked whether the district would allow a transgender girl to share a room with other students on a field trip. The school official, identified as the district’s executive DEI director, said the district would respond to the situation on a case-by-case basis with parental input.

Richardson school district officials said in a statement to the Tribune that only students of the same sex assigned at birth share rooms. The district also said its schools follow all anti-discrimination requirements, including a law stating that student-athletes must compete in events according to their sex assigned at birth.

“The district is not aware of any instance where this requirement was not followed, nor of any RISD-specific information suggesting the requirement should not be followed,” said Tim Clark, the district’s executive director of communications.

During the 2023 legislative session, Texas passed Senate Bill 17, which offices, programs and training at publicly-funded universities. Under the law, universities cannot create diversity offices, hire employees to carry out diversity-related initiatives or require any DEI training as a condition for employment or admission.

Since the law was passed, universities across the state have moved to shutter DEI offices and efforts. Those offices played a pivotal role in helping Black, Latino, LGBTQ+ and other underrepresented students adjust to life on college campuses and foster a sense of community among their peers.

Educational institutions across the country made promises following the 2020 murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer to work harder at creating more inclusive environments for their students. But many of those efforts have taken significant steps back as state officials have passed legislation to shutter them, labeling those efforts as left-wing indoctrination.

Abbott’s desire to now extend the law to K-12 public schools represents the latest attempt by Texas state officials to exert greater control over how educational institutions go about ensuring students from all backgrounds feel included, while limiting how they can teach and talk about gender, sexual orientation and America’s history of racism.

Abbott’s promise to prevent taxpayer dollars from flowing toward DEI initiatives at schools comes as public education spending is set to play a central role during the 2025 legislative session, which began earlier this week.

During the last session, House Democrats and rural Republicans’ efforts to block a school voucher program — Abbott’s top legislative priority for the last few years — came at the cost of not securing a funding boost for public schools, which has left Texas school districts grappling with multimillion-dollar budget deficits and other serious financial difficulties like school closures.

Abbott now says he has the votes to get a voucher program, which would allow parents to use tax dollars to pay for their children’s private education, across the finish line. He has also to increase public education funding this year.

The governor’s comments immediately drew praise from Sen. , R-Conroe, chair of the Senate’s Education Committee and author of the current DEI law.

“SB 17 has become a model for the entire nation, and I am ready to expand the law to protect the 6 million students in Texas schools from failed, divisive DEI programs,” Creighton wrote on social media. “Let’s get to work.”

This article originally appeared in at . The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

SALT LAKE CITY — Shortly after taking office in 2023, Republican state Rep. Katy Hall heard from constituents complaining about how their adult children were required to write diversity, equity and inclusion statements while applying for medical and dental schools and other graduate programs in Utah.

“It doesn’t seem right,” Hall said. “It doesn’t seem like it belongs in an application.”

It took two legislative sessions, but Hall successfully sponsored a new law that not only prohibits the use of such DEI statements but also bars state institutions from relying on specific individual characteristics in employment and education decisions. Additionally, it eliminates central offices dedicated to diversity, equity and inclusion.

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In Utah and beyond, lawmakers are enjoying growing success in their pushback against DEI programs at public universities, many of which have hired administrators and established departments dedicated to creating more diverse faculties and student bodies. Some schools’ requirement that job and student applicants explain in writing how they’d bring DEI initiatives to their work or schooling has aroused especially strong opposition. Some states have dismantled DEI departments and programs, as well as ended race- and gender-based programs and scholarships.

Many in Utah describe their approach as more measured than that of other states. The law, which goes into effect July 1, includes a carve-out that allows DEI to be discussed in classroom instruction as well as in research and for accreditation purposes.

Republican Gov. Spencer Cox, who signed Hall’s in January, said it “offers a balanced solution” even as it prohibits the type of training sessions he required of his staff in 2021.

The intent of the legislation, Hall said, is to shift higher education away from a focus on identity.

“This is what we felt was a more nuanced way to say: ‘We want diversity, we want equality of opportunity, we want inclusion, but we want diversity of opinion and a diversity of thought and diversity of religion and diversity of everything.’ Not just external, personal identity characteristics,” Hall said.

“We used to be able to have discussions about politics without it coming to a judgment of someone’s moral character,” she added. “My hope is that there will be a little more political neutrality where you can have discussions and feel safe to have those discussions without it being so divisive.”

But the bill passed along party lines, pointed out state Rep. Angela Romero, a Democrat who serves as the House minority leader in Utah. She described what’s happening in her state as part of a broader culture war aimed at painting higher education as elite and out of touch.

“This is a national agenda,” Romero said in an interview. “It’s a machine and it’s been going for a while and it’s picking up momentum.”

Utah’s rollback is among dozens of simultaneous efforts to scale back DEI programs — to varying degrees — in state capitals and on higher education oversight boards in other Republican-led states. In at least 22 states, the legislature has enacted legislation, or public universities have set policies prohibiting or modifying DEI measures at state university systems, according to a running tally in .

Among the earliest passed was in North Dakota asking students and prospective university employees about their commitment to DEI. Florida followed last year with a that does away with diversity statements and DEI offices. Alabama in 2024 enacted a restricting public employees from being forced to agree with so-called divisive concepts, including the idea that “by virtue of an individual’s race, color, religion, sex, ethnicity, or national origin, the individual is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or subconsciously.”

In South Dakota, the Board of Regents recently enacted a policy that bars employees at its six public universities from putting their preferred gender pronouns or tribal affiliations in email signatures, according to . Most recently, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Board of Trustees last month to shift $2.3 million of DEI spending toward public safety and policing on campus. Then, the entire UNC System Board of Governors to abolish DEI policies in place since 2019 at all 17 of its campuses.

A chilling effect

Many of the efforts to roll back DEI initiatives in states have the same roots as a campaign against critical race theory spearheaded by Seattle documentary filmmaker Christopher Rufo, who in 2020 elevated a once-obscure theory about the pervasiveness of racism in American law and institutions to a household term.

Often, efforts to undo DEI initiatives argue that students — especially white students — are harmed by learning about the history of racism in the United States because it may leave them feeling guilty or ashamed of their identity. Multiple states, including , have adopted near-identical language in anti-DEI legislation that bans instruction that might prompt a person to “feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or another form of psychological distress solely because of the individual’s race or sex.

In April, polling by found that 77% of Republicans say they believe that “discrimination against white people is as problematic as discrimination against Black Americans.”

Anti-DEI laws have had a chilling effect on higher education wherever they’ve been enacted, said Irene Mulvey, the president of the American Association of University Professors, a nonprofit membership association of faculty and other academic professionals.

“The laws are deliberately vague so that professors have to be constantly thinking, ‘If I say this, will I be breaking the law? Will I lose my job or be arrested by the government if I say this in my classroom?’“ Mulvey said. “I mean, that’s where we are in America in 2024. These are the worries faculty have in an authoritarian society, and they have no place in a democracy.”

At the University of Texas, anti-DEI legislation led the system to eliminate 300 positions and to cut diversity training programs at multiple campuses.

The situation is similar in Florida, said Paul Ortiz, a professor of history and a union leader at the University of Florida. He’s leaving the school after 15 years for a position at Cornell University in New York. The fallout from the state’s DEI policies wasn’t the only reason he’s leaving — he got a great job offer — but it contributed to his decision, Ortiz said.

“To pretend that it’s not having an effect on the cultural and intellectual life of the state is the worst thing of all,” Ortiz said. “I’m hoping the pendulum is going to swing back.”

Students are the real losers, Mulvey said. At the University of Oklahoma, for example, Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt’s executive order ending DEI programs in state offices and agencies the National Education for Women’s Leadership program. The program encourages undergraduate women to engage in politics and public policy. Since its founding in 2002, more than 650 students have attended.

Stitt told the that his executive order was about race, not the women’s leadership program, and called the backlash against his policy “political criticism.”

“What we’re seeing now is nobody’s helped when these offices are closed or programs are shut down, no one’s better off,” Mulvey said. “We’re having watered-down discussions and anodyne classes because faculty without tenure are afraid of losing their job if they say the wrong thing or if someone takes it out of context or tapes them and puts it online.”

DEI statements

DEI statements in university hiring have been one of the easiest targets nationwide, in part because there’s less support for them even among more progressive educators who support wider DEI initiatives.

Editorial boards and columnists at outlets as varied as , and the have railed against diversity statements, saying they too often result in “self-censorship and ideological policing” on college campuses. Many elite universities, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard, have DEI statements as a requirement of employment applications. At best, critics argue, they’re boilerplate that echoes what employers want to hear, rendering them useless. At their worst, they serve as ideological litmus tests.

“We can build an inclusive environment in many ways, but compelled statements impinge on freedom of expression, and they don’t work,” MIT President Sally Kornbluth said in a statement to in May, confirming the university’s new approach.

But DEI statements have their defenders. Suzanne Penuel, an associate professor who teaches first-year literature and writing at the University of South Carolina Lancaster, said she witnessed how high-quality DEI statements set job candidates apart when she served on the hiring committee for a position teaching American history. Nearly all academic applicants have polished curriculum vitae, impeccable recommendations and pitch-perfect cover letters, she wrote in an op-ed in .

Their DEI statements gave them personality, Penuel said in an interview. It was easier to tell which applicants would take a student-centered approach to their work; one applicant wrote that the textbooks used in the school’s history courses ought to be free, an interpretation that the hiring committee viewed as an inclusive approach to education.

She worries that the assault on already slim DEI initiatives in South Carolina is a continuation of a trend that began with a 2021 legislative requirement that all college students be taught , and a proposed in elementary schools.

“I hope I never see the day when there is this prescribed list of texts from a narrow list of publishers, and only some topics can be discussed,” Penuel said.

In Utah, where Democrats hold just 14 of the 75 seats in the state House of Representatives, Romero fought unsuccessfully to keep the anti-DEI legislation from passing.

Her reasons for opposing the legislation were partly personal. As a first-generation college student at the University of Utah, she took advantage of what was then called the Center for Ethnic Student Affairs, an academic advising that could now be considered a DEI initiative. It was a safe place in a state where the dominant religion and culture often excludes people of color, Romero said.

Because of her association with the center, Romero landed an internship at the state legislature in 1994, leading to a career working in municipal government in Salt Lake City. And now, she serves as president of the .

“Because of that, I’m here now,” Romero said when the bill was up for debate. “What it did is it addressed the disparities. … There’s unintentional consequences when we just try to sweep things and say we’re all the same, because we’re not. There’s still a lot of things that have to change in this country for us all to be on a level playing field.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on and .

Three years ago, Valeria Atanacio urged state lawmakers to pass a bill aiming to increase Indigenous families’ access to early learning and child care programs.

When the Oregon Legislature embraced the proposal — called the Tribal Early Learning Hub — she considered it a victory.

“That was really impactful because it was delivering on a promise,” said Atanacio, who was the tribal affairs manager for Oregon’s Early Learning Division in 2021. The promise, she said, was to empower tribes to shape how those state resources and services would be delivered.

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The Legislature tasked a tribal advisory committee, composed of representatives from all nine of the state’s federally recognized tribes, with designing the hub. Oregon already has 10 such hubs, which are regional subagencies of the early learning department that shape early learning strategies in their local communities. The tribal hub would focus solely on tribal communities instead. Lawmakers allocated $601,000 to , with another $626,000 in 2023. Atanacio was promoted to tribal affairs director in 2022, ran the meetings and served as a key liaison between state officials and the tribal committee members.

But in October — after 14 months of meetings and nearly $2 million in state and federal funds allocated — the committee scrapped plans for the early learning hub entirely, saying it had found no way to structure it in a way that would honor each tribe’s sovereignty. The committee put its funding toward grants distributed among the tribes, but those decisions were made in meetings that were not open to the public, possibly in violation of Oregon’s open-meetings laws, InvestigateWest found. And Atanacio, who said she received little support in her role leading the early learning division’s work with tribes, was demoted suddenly in July 2023 and then resigned. For six months after, all three of the early learning department’s tribal affairs positions remained vacant.

“It was getting to that point where it felt my values no longer aligned with this system,” Atanacio said. “I felt like I was being put in the position to pacify the Native community.”

However, the Tribal Early Learning Hub remains required under the law passed in 2021, and Alyssa Chatterjee, director of the Department of Early Learning and Care, said the statute must be amended to allow the committee to permanently stop working on it. But the department is bringing no proposed fix forward during the 2024 Legislative session, saying tribes need more time to work out an alternate plan.

“We have to remember we’re talking about nine individual nations, and so it takes time to coalesce around a shared idea,” Chatterjee said. “As the work evolved over time and over the last six months, there was a lot more clarity about which direction to go.”

The lawmakers who created the early learning hub haven’t publicly expressed much interest in the committee’s progress or how the money was spent. When InvestigateWest reached out to the 10 members of the legislative committee overseeing the early learning department, only one, Rep. Anna Scharf, responded, saying that she was “basically unaware” that the tribal committee even existed.

Meanwhile, tribal representatives on the committee said their rejection of the hub doesn’t mean they’re not fulfilling their mission — they’re just approaching the same goals a different way.

“I think that’s OK if there has to be a change in direction,” said Sandy Henry, education director for the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians and co-chair of the tribal advisory committee. “We just keep our eye on the prize and keep walking forward.”

Others, however, have some lingering doubt that tribes will be able to get what they need from the early learning department without the hub that tribal leaders fought for for years.

“We’ve got to wait and find out if that’s true or not, and if not, hold people’s feet to the fire,” said Julie Siestreem, who represents the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw on the committee. “I’m in a constant state of prayer, a constant state of alertness. The primary concern is that our children are served, and that’s the bottom line.”

Addressing entrenched struggles

Education leaders from several Oregon tribes have argued for years that the state’s rules sometimes prevented Indigenous providers from caring for children according to their own cultural knowledge. For example, Oregon required an exemption with a physician’s signoff for a licensed child care provider to use a cradleboard as an infant sleep setting, as is common in some tribal cultures.

And though the state increased its investments in child care and early learning, tribes haven’t had clear pathways to access those funds while honoring their government sovereignty, Atanacio said.

The Tribal Early Learning Hub was supposed to be the entity to bring all the tribes and the state together to solve those obstacles.

The brain develops most rapidly during the first few years of life, research has shown. The ethos of early learning is to set children up to thrive as they enter the K-12 system.

Although Oregon has little data on Indigenous families’ access to early learning and child care, as children grow up, data lays bare the educational inequities they face.

About 21% of all American Indian and Alaska Native third graders were proficient in English language arts in 2023, compared with 39% of third graders statewide, according to state assessment data. In 2023, 68% of American Indian and Alaska Native seniors graduated from high school, compared with 81% of all Oregon students.

“We continue to see trends with Native American youth that they’re just not as successful in those Eurocentric environments as they could be,” said Henry. “That starts in early childhood education. That starts with our babies.”

Boosting support for tribes’ early learning programs is about more than academic achievement, however, Henry said.

“The other thing that’s important is that culture and language are incorporated into the early learning environment for our kids,” she said. “That’s an important piece for their identity, and it’s important that we recognize that and honor that.”

Tribes nationwide don’t receive much federal money to support their early learning and child care programs — less than $600 per child on average each year through the federal child care subsidy, according to by the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. Some also receive Head Start funding and run home visiting programs for at-risk families. In Oregon, only a handful of the nine federally recognized tribes participate in state-subsidized programs, such as Preschool Promise.

As part of a broader goal to make early learning more accessible statewide, lawmakers created regional early learning hubs in 2013. They bring together local educators, physical and mental health providers, and other professionals to form strategies to serve families with children under 5 in their own community. The hubs also manage enrollment in early learning and child care programs.

However, not all tribes have a good relationship with their respective regional early learning hubs, Henry said. That’s what prompted some to push for a hub that would serve tribes exclusively.

“My particular tribe has enjoyed a really solid relationship with our early learning hub,” she said. “My understanding is that has not been the case throughout the state.”

During the tribal advisory committee’s first two years, it tackled some of the barriers that interfered with their cultural practices, such as the cradleboard issue. At the advisory committee’s recommendation, the Early Learning Council, which sets early learning system rules, removed the exemption requirement. State-licensed child care providers can now use cradleboards if a parent prefers without having to seek an exemption.

Yet, despite being a public body subject to public meetings law, the tribal advisory committee didn’t often operate as one, including when it decided in 2022 how to allocate the funding it received. As with most of the tribal advisory committee meetings, the department did not make the agenda, minutes and recording public until more than a year later.

The Early Learning Division combined the state funding with another $650,000 in federal funds, bringing the total that the committee allocated to $1.2 million.

The committee agreed to split the money evenly between the tribes in $190,000 grants, with broad allowable uses. Tribes spent the money in various ways, including training for early childhood educators, a youth needs assessment, and cultural items and Indigenous literature for preschool classes, according to the early learning department.

It’s not clear how much of the funds, if any, has gone back into the committee’s work to structure the hub.

Bumps on the road

Personnel conflicts and prolonged vacancies also factored into the committee’s struggle to make the early learning hub work.

Atanacio was not renewed in her position as tribal affairs director in July, a decision she said was conveyed to her without warning or explanation. Because she had been in a probationary period as the director, she was returned to her previous position of liaison to the committee members.

A member of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde with an educational and professional background in early childhood education, Atanacio had first joined the Early Learning Division in 2020, when it was still part of the Oregon Department of Education. She was its first tribal affairs manager. After she was made director in 2022, she helped oversee the distribution of the early learning grants to tribes, serving as a point of communication and coordination for the committee’s work.

It’s not clear what led to Atancio’s removal as director in July. Chatterjee declined to discuss the action, citing personnel confidentiality. While Chatterjee did say that the committee’s failure to comply with public meetings law happened on Atanacio’s watch, Atanacio said she was never notified about it. Her personnel record, which InvestigateWest reviewed, contained no indication that she was disciplined or put on an improvement plan before her supervisors determined she was “unwilling or unable” to perform the necessary functions of the tribal affairs director role.

Atanacio said she received little feedback from Chatterjee while in the role. Without clear answers, she has speculated that her demotion was related to her defense of tribes’ rights to self-govern, which put her at odds with the state’s priorities at times.

“As one of the only Native American people employed by the agency, there wasn’t any support. There wasn’t a safe space for me as a person,” she said. What disappointed her was “just the disposability piece of it.”

Atanacio left the department in August, resigning from the liaison position. She continues to work on early learning issues through other channels.

“I feel very much validated in my decision to leave when I did,” she said. “I still am in this work, and I want to keep moving progress toward more tribally inclusive services and programming.”

After her departure, all three positions within the early learning department’s newly created Tribal Affairs Office remained vacant for the next five months. In January, Paulina Whitehat, a Navajo educator and researcher with expertise in special education, started as the new tribal affairs director. She declined to comment on this story.

Success plan

The tribal advisory committee is now crafting an Indigenous student success plan, similar to one created by the Oregon Department of Education in 2020. The Education Department’s plan lays out goals such as increasing accurate data on Indigenous youth, improving graduation rates and reducing overrepresentation in school discipline.

The committee has not specified how long it will take to create its own student success plan or to approach the Legislature about changing its role in statute.

“I think a really common theme is (tribes) don’t want to be pressured into a timeline,” Chatterjee said.

The months since the committee set aside its work on the Tribal Early Learning Hub is “not enough time to have a legislative concept that each tribe could have vetted through their government structure,” she said.

In the Legislature, the House Early Childhood and Human Services committee is new to dealing with the early learning department, said Scharf, the Republican lawmaker from Amity who serves as one of the committee’s vice chairs.

In the 2023 session, legislators were concerned with bigger changes as the Early Learning Division became the Department of Early Learning and Care. Primarily, they focused on the state’s employment-related child care subsidy, which moved from the Oregon Department of Human Services to the new early learning department last July.

“I can’t think of any reports or information we have received, and was basically unaware of there even being a Tribal Advisory Committee,” Scharf said.

Scharf said she believes that the early learning department should be assigned its own House committee separate from human services so that both can get enough attention from legislators.

Tribal committee members, meanwhile, said they are keeping their focus where it belongs as they make new plans.

“I feel like a lot of really good work has been done,” said Henry. “Would we have liked to be further down the road than we are now? Yeah, we would. But it’s also important that we stay true to our goal and true to the tribal citizens that we serve.”

InvestigateWest () is an independent news nonprofit dedicated to investigative journalism in the Pacific Northwest. Reach reporter Kaylee Tornay at kaylee@invw.org. This story was produced with support from the Investigative Reporters & Editors’ .

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oregon Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Lynne Terry for questions: info@oregoncapitalchronicle.com. Follow Oregon Capital Chronicle on and .

Diane discusses diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) with Antonio Saunders, co-founder of Kriseles, a DEI and Business Innovation services provider. The two consider the growing opposition to DEI in American politics and media, Antonio’s innovative and unapologetically hopeful model, and their collaboration to leverage that model to drive change at Summit Schools.  

Listen to the episode below. A full transcript follows.

Diane Tavenner: For the first time in five seasons, I’m not going to start today’s show with “Hey, Michael” because Michael isn’t here with us today. We are both, like so many people we know, in this sandwich generation where we have children who depend on us and aging parents and family members who need us. And today, Michael is where he needs to be, which is with his family, and my heart is there with him. We really wanted to have this conversation together, and we’re also really clear about our priorities. And so we are going to miss him today. And for me, even in these circumstances, there is real beauty because the guest that we have today on Class Disrupted is someone who I began having weekly conversations with, like I did with Michael, during the pandemic. They continue to this day, as I am in close relationship and work with our guest, who is Antonio Sanders. And Antonio has been in education for many, many years, holding many roles and working with many organizations. Well, we’ll get into this, but I would characterize his primary work around diversity, equity and inclusion. And that is certainly where we came together and met and began our work together. And it’s the conversation that we want to have today. Michael and I seek to do two things on the podcast. One is to make sure that we’re really talking about what’s impacting education today and how we take it into the future. And two, to engage in dialogue that is nuanced and that really doesn’t succumb to this polarized view of the world, but really takes a nuanced third way approach. And this is a topic that we think needs that type of conversation now. And I don’t know anyone better to have that conversation with than you, Antonio. And it’s a conversation we have regularly today that will be public. And so here we are. Welcome to Class Disrupted.

Antonio Saunders: Thank you, Diane and Michael, for having me today. I wanted to send lots of love and support to Michael and his family right now. And I wanted to say thank you for having a conversation with me today on a topic that is near and dear in our heart but also in our work and in our relationship together.

Diane Tavenner: It indeed is. I like to always start with just some basic definitions, because when we talk about some of these hot topics, what are we actually talking about? And so let’s just start at the very basic level. DEI has sort of become a word in and of itself, but it actually has an acronym. And so let’s pull it apart. What do the D, E and the I stand for?

Antonio Saunders: Yeah, let’s talk about diversity. And I think about this…These are the things that make us special and unique. It is our background, our race, our age, our characteristics, our ability, our differences. When we think about inclusion, it’s thinking about, “My gosh, I’m experiencing those things, and I don’t have those things in the way that you have them. And I want those things to be included. I want them to be welcome, I want to respect them, and I want to cultivate them.” That’s the act of inclusion. Equity says this is that based off my background and my experiences, we didn’t all get the same, so it’s going to take us being intentional about providing what someone needs versus ensuring that everyone gets the same thing.

Diane Tavenner: Yeah. And that’s the contrast of equity to equality in some ways. The reality is, as you just described, that DEI is being ascribed a lot of other definitions right now. And as I read headline after headline after headline and story after story, DEI is becoming this dirty word, if you will, and quite frankly, there’s an effort to kind of cancel it, if you will, and we’ll get into that in a moment. But I’m looking at a couple of headlines here, and it has become one of those terms that is being used to weaponize things. That’s partly why we’re having this conversation today, because we’ve moved into a moment where something that you just described like, we’re all diverse humans. We want everyone to be included. “We want people to have what they need in order to be included and to be successful” becomes something that is viewed as not positive or is negative or something even worse than that. And so the first question I want us to sort of tackle is, how did we get here to this moment where something like diversity, equity, and inclusion becomes something that is viewed as negative or counterproductive?

Antonio Saunders: Yes, I want to say this is the difference between where the work starts versus where the work is. Now, let’s talk about the original intent of the work in a way that we can probably all understand it and appreciate it. All men are created equal, and in that is the promise of this country, to rectify something that had been done in the past and put us all in plain sight of what it means to be an American citizen. We, as people living in this country, deserve and have equal access. But that was a value, that was something we were espousing to. It wasn’t our reality. What the work became was, how do we begin to implement this in organizations? So some of that work became about compliance-based, mandatory work. You know how we feel about things being mandatory. So here is when you get into what happens when we do work that doesn’t require us to change, we don’t see the full value of it. So, Diane, let me give you an example. So you can say…A corporation can say DEI is about me being required to hire a diversity of people. Or DEI can be about, I understand personally, have done the work, and benefit from running a diverse organization because I see the impact on people, community, in upholding this original state. I believe that most people are experiencing the mandatory version of this work that leaves them unchanged versus the real personal and work impact of saying, I’ve got to show up every single day doing the work, living the work, to experience the fullness of it.

Diane Tavenner: Yeah, you started at the place that matters the most, which is, like, the biggest place. Our country, our values as a country and a nation. And DEI is throughout every aspect of our society, in our country, the diversity. We are an incredibly diverse country. We have this promise across corporations and business and industry. And DEI is very prevalent in education right now. And so a lot of these headlines that we’re seeing, these sort of polarizing headlines are happening and occurring in education, and that’s clearly where we work and in higher ed as well as K-12. And I think we’ve all seen these. But some of these high profile incidents are the first black female president of Harvard ultimately resigning from the position after a long campaign or an intense campaign for that to happen. We’re seeing this in the efforts to ban books across the country in school libraries and school classrooms. We’re seeing this around transgender bathrooms, the Supreme Court striking down the use of race in higher education admissions. I could go on and on and on. There are a number of specific incidents that are happening in K-12 and higher ed. I know you, Antonio, and you personally have lived a life where many of the incidents that you’ve been a part of were these headlines. And this is one of the things that we talk about. What is it like to be someone who’s had these experiences? Put us in your shoes.

Antonio Saunders: Yeah. I think there is this way of looking at the world and it reflecting back what has happened in your own personal life. So I’ll take you back to my 9th grade year in Gardendale, Alabama, living in Birmingham, and as a part of a consent decree by the courts, black kids from this county were now being bussed in to a predominantly white, suburban, conservative town. I love Gardendale. I love the people of Gardendale. And the thing that was very present there was there was more white kids in a class than there was black kids. So you ended up with the white kids always deciding what the black kids got. I decided to run for class president, and it had never been done. This is where you begin to actually start making these connections to this, when you’re the first and the only one, and you have to raise your consciousness around, like, wait, what kind of system would only make one type of person possible for leadership? But that’s what was happening. And so I won. And not only did I win, I won all four years. So now, Diane, I’m not only Antonio Saunders, a student, I’m Antonio Saunders, who’s navigating a space, a space with parents who are trying to understand what I’m doing to make things even. Teachers who disagree or agree with what I’m doing, who still have to give me grades. An administration who’s saying, how do we let you lead but also hold on to some of that power? It’s a very risky situation to be in. It had gotten to a point where I really understood this in a way. When I was a junior, I was walking from one building to the next building, and one of my science favorite science teachers comes up to me. She’s light, she’s jovial, but she walks up to me in a more serious tone. She says, “Antonio, promise me something before I tell you what it is. I’m like, you cannot be serious. But her eyes were glossy and full of emotion. I said, okay, I promise. She says, promise me you’ll never be the first black president because they will kill you. Now, taking that in as a black student with a white teacher, telling you, you’ve got to lower your potential to fit in the context of how people will react to your progress.

Diane Tavenner: And I think she was doing it from a place of care and love, too, which is the really complicated part, right?

Antonio Saunders: Yeah. Because care and love could be…One way is: Antonio be mindful of this. The other way, – which had not been sort of…She was not equipped to do. It was not at this moment…We had not gotten there – was to create the condition where that could no longer be a possibility for my life or people who look like me.

Diane Tavenner: Yeah, that unintended consequence. And the interesting thing about that, Antonio, is that like all humans, you have multiple dimensions to your identity. We’re starting to talk about one predominantly right now that contributes to how you see the world, how you experience the world, and then how you are able to process other people’s experience in the world. And some of those aspects of your identity are particularly relevant to conversations about DEI, obviously the visible ones. But there’s a whole bunch about your experience, too, that you bring to this conversation that I think shapes your view. And so tell us a little bit more about those pieces.

Antonio Saunders: Yeah. I think the thing that has shaped me most is a group of black women in Birmingham, Alabama, who raised me, and they raised me with a particular value system that, at the time, I couldn’t understand. I just obliged to. And it was because my grandmother, my mother, and my aunt, they were really setting me up to be the patriarch of my family. At an early age, my grandmother told me [that] when you meet people, you don’t meet them. You meet their spirit. She was tapping me into the human condition. And then she would say, because we lived where we live, and there would be a lot of things that I would have to navigate, “Be careful how you treat people, especially when they do you wrong” because she believed even the people who were intentionally or unintentionally trying to do you harm, they still carried a light. And so you really had to be careful your reaction to them, how you maintained or fell out of community with them. And a final one came from my mom. She, as a single parent, had to navigate life. And in most cases, Diane. She could have protected my sister Nikki and I from the circumstances that beared down on us, but instead, she invited us in. In that before my mom made me a man, before she made me black, she really made me a human being. And it was in the humanity of my existence that I had to show up with my family first, not in all of these politicized identities that can be ascribed to me. Who are you as not a reactor to the condition of humanity, but as the shape of it. That is what these women held me responsible for.

Diane Tavenner: As you’re describing those values of these incredible women who I have come to know a little bit and love and appreciate, it feels like it’s hard to live by them in this moment in time, or maybe not hard for you, although I know there are challenges, but a lot of people aren’t living by them. A lot of people don’t meet people’s spirits first. They don’t lead with their humanity. How are you navigating that? How do you hold true to those values?

Antonio Saunders: I think we just have to let ourselves live in the human experience, that two things are showing up at the same time, That I deeply want this country to change, and in many cases, and in many times, it doesn’t. When I was going through the moment of 2020, a lot of things were happening in my life. There was the external forces of Ahmaud Aubrey, Brianna Taylor, George Floyd that was sending a signal like, you can’t be free. You’ll never be free. Why have hope? The second thing was I lost my younger brother at the age of 30. And carrying your family through the darkest valley after they’d lived a life of suffering was almost too much for me. It was the thing in life that would say, you might as well pack it up and believe that there is no way that your role of moving your family from generational curses to generational blessings would be able to play out. It was a moment to succumb. And then I was changing careers to become an entrepreneur. Everything was bearing down. And then I sat there and I said, “But wait a minute, Antonio, because let’s have conversations with ourselves about what we truly want and what we’re going to truly live by. My grandmother told me all things were possible. You can do anything, and that’s what I expect of you.” So what the confrontation of my life and my personal values was is, am I going to be the person who sits on the side as the bystander and says, this is what’s wrong with society and it’s never going to change? Or was I going to become the person who said, I get to decide what happens? So, Diane, I was beginning to flex between am I the bystander to what I don’t want, or am I the builder of the possibility that I want to exist? I was vacillating between these two, and I chose the latter without losing sight of the former. I could be the builder of the world but understand why the world puts so many people into a state where we can feel hopeless, like this world is never going to change for us. My job was to build something that could get people from the sidelines of life into the highest possibility of life. That is my work now as an entrepreneur, but most importantly, first as a human being.

Diane Tavenner: Yeah. I’m thinking back on and reflecting on those moments and those conversations and the dialogue and the work that we were doing as you were navigating all of those really challenging moments and experiences and then getting really excited about what was coming, the creative force that was coming from you during that time, which ultimately led to a model that we’re going to talk about and a way of doing DEI work, if you will, which feels important because I named all those kind of headlines that are happening in education. There’s a policy response that is following those. And we see this often where over half the states in the US have introduced and/or approved bills that are targeting DEI in the traditional sense. And you were clear, like, look, one of the places we’ve gone wrong with DEI is this mandatory, compliance based orientation versus a true experience that helps us be human. But some of those bills and those pieces of legislation are essentially prohibiting programming that is related to DEI or called DEI, or prohibiting the funding of any sort of DEI officers or offices, and prohibiting any preferential treatment in hiring. I could go on and on and on. There’s a divisive subjects ban. Given your decision to not be a bystander and to really focus on building a world that makes sense with this legislation as context, what do you make of that? Where do we go?

Antonio Saunders: Yeah, I think we have to be very savvy, sophisticated observers of the world. I think that we have to really understand that we are in a moment where we’re deciding if we’re going to be in conflict or connection with each other. I think it’s unfortunate. A key role of some of our leaders is to lead us as a society into conflict instead of connection, that when we are in conflict, we begin to stoke a core fear of human existence. If I exist, you can’t. You think about it this way. When we talk more about the work of humanity giving us a competitive edge versus the real purpose of it. The real purpose of this is, as humans, we all need to be included and accepted for who we are and given space to be each other’s neighbors and to show up for each other. So if we directly answer the question, this legislation is really about what happens when we become unaware of each other, when we can actually seemingly practice disregard. And I say this, Diane, knowing that we have to really create a distinction between people who are invested at a political or other levels to make these things public, versus the experiences I have been having with people who are not down with this. I would say that the people that I have been talking to, the group of CEOs, down to my friends, down to my high school friends from Gardendale, down to my college friends, there’s learning that needs to take place. There’s change and progress that we can shape, but there’s an intentionality and an investment from institutions and structures that stoke this fear, that create these barriers that say, why would someone be more invested in me hating white people or white people hating certain demographics and beginning to proliferate that right. What is the investment in us being a divided country instead of us being a country that can actually come together? And we have to say that the investment to conflict cannot be greater than the investment and the conversation around our shared humanity and community.

Diane Tavenner: That certainly resonates with me. I suspect it resonates with a lot of people who are exhausted, quite frankly, by being in conflict. They don’t want to be in conflict, but I think they feel pulled into it, and there’s no choice. Everything around them feels like you have to pick a side and you’re pulled apart. And so how do we move from conflict to connection? How does anyone who doesn’t want to participate in that and isn’t benefiting from conflict? How do we move to the connective space?

Antonio Saunders: Yeah, it’s something that I’ve been thinking about for three years now and talking to many people about. And one of the things is really having the conversation and seeing the system say, who puts us at odds with each other? And how are they using race to hijack, co-op this moment such that it feels like we’re going backwards in a moment where we should be propelling forward. I think we need to actually see that system and not ignore it and not just react to it. We should actually understand there are players that are actually in charge of this. I think the next thing is we need a human value system that says this: we believe in each other, we will be at peace with each other, and we believe in our differences. This means that there’s one way our history and differences and disagreements can put us at odds with each other. But in this paradigm, those same elements of history, differences and disagreements, can bring us together to do the work that we need to do. And so what I have done since 2020 is really begin to work with organizations, in particular, CEOs. Groups of them. I have a white group of CEOs, a black and brown cohort of CEOs, and then they span from the private to the social sector. And what we have been talking about is, what does it mean for us to say leaders don’t have to know the way. They’re given space to experiment. And instead of holding you as the people in charge of your organization, responsible for creating change, how do you equip everyone so they can hold themselves responsible for creating change that works for all? What we are talking about is a new approach to the work that gets us to a meaningful, valuable way of operating with each other that is not just, no longer compliance or mandatory, but it’s the work that we were always committed to doing in the first place. This is the work of us coexisting.

Diane Tavenner: Yeah. As you’re talking, first of all, what you say really resonates with me. And then I’m guessing that some people are a little bit, having some cognitive dissonance. They’re like, wait a minute. What you’re talking about is not what I’ve experienced in DEI, and you and I both know this. We’ve had lots of conversations that a lot of DEI experiences that are mandatory, compliance based, oriented, or otherwise. They are experiences where white people are told to feel bad and feel guilty and sort of taken through a whole history of all the things that they have done wrong. We’ve talked about white people feeling like that means you should step aside. There’s all these messages and not bringing together people and not having sort of a shared human experience and instead really pulling people apart. So what you’re saying is probably foreign to a lot of people who are listening to this, and they’re like, wait, what are you saying? That sounds really different. And I think it is. And I think it is one of the things Michael and I talk about all the time on this podcast. It’s why we created this podcast was, we have an outdated model of education in America that at one point served us. Look, it was created for a reason. It wasn’t irrational. It actually did a lot of important, good work. It’s just no longer relevant, given the moment of time we’re living in, the progress we’ve made, where we are, the number of students we have. We need new models of education to meet the moment that we are in and who we are. And I think that is what I experienced from you. You acknowledge the importance of the DEI model of the past and how it came into being and what it intended to do. And you also recognize it’s not where we need to be today. We need a new model. You have created a new model and are working on a new model.

Antonio Saunders: Yeah.

Diane Tavenner: And I think let’s get into that. What is at the heart and the essence of that.

Antonio Saunders: Yeah. I think the first thing for us to come to and actually say is, the values of DEI are my existence. They are not things that are about a program or initiative or things. These are the things that allow me to stand up in life and say, I have duty to my family, myself, and my community, and I have duty to fulfill not the struggle of my grandmother, but my grandmother’s dream. This is preserving the original intent of the work and translating it into something that I believe all of us want and need. And so what, Diane, you are alluding to is what my founder, Tracy Session, and I call the humanity, freedom, and dreams model. And if you were looking at this model, you would see three sets of work being laid out and describe culture and belonging, leadership and team. And when you go and you read the model on the left side, it narrates what this work can become when we become at odds with each other, frustrated and or the natural dispositions we have versus the right side is about where we move into. And it’s important for us to recognize when we are making progress, we are in between these spaces of where we are and where we are next. So I’ll just read some of them that we have talked about, and then I think, Diane, we can get into some of the things that we have done together. So, on the left side, it says, we inherit our ancestors struggles. We are fighters. Fighting injustice creates racial progress. The world is against black and brown people. Now, if the world is against black and brown people, you know what’s got to happen. I’ve got to spend my life confronting and establishing expertise on how to disrupt systemic racism and white supremacy. What is my relationship with white people? Is what you were getting at in this current society? Well, we got to decenter whiteness, and we got to interrogate it. But no one sometimes talks about the cost of that on people of color. I’ve got to spend my life convincing people to see my pain, not my potential. And while fighting this fight is so exhausting, it’s the only way this country will hear us. Now, for white people, it’s sort of like you got to feel bad about the past, and you got to withstand being deeply associated with being called the labeled racism white supremacy. I call this side unintentionally becoming an expert in a world we don’t want. I believe this is what Toni Morrison was talking about. With racism and white supremacy, Diane, it becomes the distraction. The road that we were on. Struggle is on the way to freedom, not the place that we sit down and say, this is it. So the counter to this is, we inherited our ancestors struggles. No, we inherited our ancestors dreams.

Diane Tavenner: Yeah. The shift from struggle to dream.

Antonio Saunders: The shift from struggle to dream. I’m not a fighter. My grandmother made me a waymaker because against all odds, what’s in front of me reveals what’s inside of me, which means at every point, I’m going to redefine myself as bigger. I am going to take on the challenge. And there are different tools in fighting and way making the next thing. Fighting injustice creates racial progress versus building our dreams creates racial progress. You were talking about what it meant as a white person to be in DEI spaces where you feel like your identity is under siege. Well, that’s for everybody in the room, in some cases, of mandatory trainings, right where you’re going in, and you’re saying, we are redefining our life by the past relationship of oppressed, sir, and the oppressed, which means I’ve got to show you my pain, hold you responsible for my pain, and I’ve got to make you the one who takes that. And you’re responsible for doing something about it, but you ain’t been equipped to do that. There’s a certain equipping you need to be able to do that. So to finish that is like, we need to hold an understanding of the past, but we need to equip you to create the future. And what this means is simply, is this: the power that we have in this model, especially for people of color, is… Black people, this is my love letter to them. And my hope for society is that I have been in DEI sessions, and I have facilitated DEI sessions for years, and none of them have been about my dreams. And I lament that reducing the value of this work from my ancestors to about sparring and fighting and destroying and removing humanity when their lives were about situating us speaking the truth that we are all humans. Yes, I am black, and I don’t need to destroy you to exhibit my value. But unintentionally, the work can be about me versus you, me confronting you, me calling you this, me not doing this, instead of about its true intent, which is, I am here to build the dream. I am here to live the dream that all of us can coexist without destroying each other.

Diane Tavenner: Yeah. So many things coming up for me right now. One of them, and we’ve had this conversation. One of the ways I can relate to what you’re describing is I’ve spent 20 years in the charter school movement, and I started in that movement because I wanted to build a school that served kids in a way that I didn’t see. The schools that I was in was serving them. It was this beautiful, amazing dream. And if I look back over the 20 years, I spent a lot more time, a lot more energy, and developed a lot more skill in fighting to just have a school and keep it open and get a building, and fighting, fighting, fighting just to try to, I guess, have that dream and so little time actually dreaming, in reality, in proportion. And so this idea that I had become an expert fighter versus an expert dreamer. And when you describe that to me, those are the skills that you have been sort of equipped with, and you’re like, no, I actually am going to turn to being a dreamer. I’m going to turn to creating the world with all people that will serve all of us, and in doing so, will really serve the people, my people who haven’t been served. That was a powerful experience and lesson for me that grounded me in work that we ended up doing. You know, I will say that we came into each other’s lives around the time of George Floyd’s murder. And as you know, at that time, I was the leader of Summit. And there were a lot of people who said, you shouldn’t be the leader of this organization. You’re a white woman. The majority of the children in this organization are people of color. You should step down and you should step aside. And you had a different vision for what should happen in that moment.

Antonio Saunders: Yeah, we didn’t know each other. We had met maybe months previously, and now we were contending with the situation where there was sort of a playbook for this moment, which means oust the perception you had done something, made a mistake, and with that, you were no longer capable of doing this. And you needed to go. And someone that replaced you, we needed to look like me. And I think that we need to just sit with the consciousness of that, that we have made or could make this work about swapping seats instead of understanding what it means for different people to lead systems when they are not prepared for all that comes with it. First, going back to the core values of this, I don’t need you to learn from your mistakes by removing your humanity, that actually holding your humanity and saying the mistakes that you’ve made, let me equip you to go back and empower you to rectify these things and become the person you said you were going to be. It was the equipping of you, of saying, “Hey, usually DEI work goes around the C suite.” It’s on the periphery. It’s not in your goals, it’s not your everyday life. It’s an initiative. You say, here’s a speaker, Antonio, come speak for us, rile us up, then go get your donuts, and then go back to your desk and pretend like things change. Well, there’s nothing in that. There’s no substance in that. This work needed to be about white leaders who…What we want them to do is build the world for people that don’t operate like them, not just stand by my side when there’s a brother lying on the street. Can you do the ultimate work of building systems that get black and brown people to their future, not build a system that harms us? I saw that as an opportunity to take you and our partnership in a way of saying, isn’t it about time you step into this moment and not away from it? And you said yes to that challenge. What was it for you that allowed you to say, and I was very upfront, like, we’re going to have to actually develop this as we go, and there’s going to be heat for all of us, and I don’t need any sort of white betrayal in the process.

Diane Tavenner: Yeah, well, we both took a leap of faith and trust. I think we come back to what your grandmother said. We met each other’s spirits. But the thing that allowed me to do that was you were offering to me, I don’t believe in the donut version, if you will, the non-substantive version. And as you know, I’m like a deep nerd around institutional design and structures and education and learning. And I was like, I don’t want to do the things that everyone’s calling for. I don’t want to just keep writing statements about bad things that have happened that doesn’t make sense to me. I don’t think that that feels real or meaningful or impactful. I want to actually do real work that changes things, and I need to know what that work is. I need a partner in that work. I need new tools and strategies because the old DEI workshops, they’re not changing anything. They’re not moving the needle. They’re not creating the institution that we want that will serve everyone, that bring us together. And so what we were able to do together was figure out what those real things were, and not just the two of us, obviously, a whole amazing group of people doing that work together. That was the offering. And that is, in my view, what you are bringing and offering to the field of DEI. And so I want to ask you, we could talk for days here, but I want to ask you, what are your hopes? Given where we are, what are your hopes? What do you want everyone to understand or to do as we move forward?

Antonio Saunders: Yeah, I think that I answered that in many ways. I think that the thing that I have to practice in my own life is…I called my dad and I told him, I said I had always been taught to narrate my story as a black man in this country. I grew up in a single parent household, and my dad walked away from me. And that is not the full story. The full story is my dad was in a situation, his home, where him staying, he would have caused more harm than him leaving. So that conversation with my father went something like this. I want to thank you, dad. I called him dad and not Desmond. I said, I want to thank you, dad, that you walked away and you didn’t stay. Because I realized to move from a place of a generational curse to a generational blessing means I’ve got to give you the thing that I needed from you, which was unconditional love. So to first answer that question is, in my own life, I am having to go back and practice what it means to actually change the story to one in support of me, not one that is against me. The next thing is that we as a society, are moving toward the most diverse workforce, the most diverse economy ever. And one of the things I know the model can do and change is people and companies. So, at Kriseles, what we are doing is saying we want to build future ready companies that can experiment, adapt, and inspire their employees and their customers. But for what? Not just for financial gain, which is definitely needed, so that we can really do the real work. And what is the real work? What you do every day with what society needs comes into clear view. And that is where you spend your time, not a one-off event, but your daily time, getting inspired, getting into diverse conversations, and building what we need. So it’s for companies to really understand they can actually shape our communities in a really powerful. The third thing that I would say, Diane, is that I alluded to this, but I did create the HFD model for society, but I created it as a love letter to the black community, to my mom, to the people around me. For this simple reason. I would get into my Lyfts and Uber, because the people that know me know that I don’t have a car. Trying to lower my carbon footprint because I fly too much. And I would get in and I would ask the brothers and sisters, I was like, how do you feel about being black? And they would tell me, it’s hard out here. And I wanted a way to change the response to that question that when we say, how do you feel about yourself and the world? I wanted them to say, I could do anything. I love this country. This country originally did not do right by my people, but I believe in the progress that we are making. What if the possibility could be that? But, you know, a black person just can’t come with the empty words of that. That’s got to be real. And so engaging in something where we could do the real work as a community. And white people no longer had to be the racist or the white supremacist to me, but they could actually be the agent of change the world needs. I believe I’m up for and invested in that future, that potentiality with the work I do every single day.

Diane Tavenner: Well, I’m up for that with you as well, and I hope others will be. And I appreciate this different perspective and view on something that’s getting talked a lot about. And I want to keep doing the work together and dialoguing about it. So thank you for joining today. Before I let you get away, Michael and I always close out the show by talking, sharing, just something we’re reading, watching, or listening to. We try to have it be outside of education, but very often it’s not. And so I will turn the question to you. What are some things you’re reading, listening, watching to that you can share with us?

Antonio Saunders: For sure. Right now I’m reading How To Get Big Things Done, which is really helping me use the challenges and the excitement of being an entrepreneur to deepen the belief that this work can be done and it will be done. Music. I’m an R&B fanatic. There’s nothing like ninety’s, R&B, the classic R&B afro beats and a little Phil Collins in there. We just sort of jam out to that. And then what I’m watching, and you know this from our conversations, we were having a whole, I think we’re having a three-part series in our weekly Wednesday meetings about this. When I came from break, I asked you, have you seen Leave the World Behind? And you told me no. And I said, okay. We often have homework for each other. I said, please go watch that. And we’ve been having a rich discussion around where our society is headed and some of the themes brought up in that movie.Diane Tavenner: In fact, I shared it on the last podcast that I had watched it, and that conversation just is not ending well. Thank you for those suggestions. I’m reading, this is kind of funny, and I even know the title is interesting. It’s called How the Scots Invented the Modern World. So just that title alone could be a little bit controversial. But as you know, my son travels. His school, his university’s around the world, and he’s in London this semester. And so we’re going to go visit him and go to Scotland. And we’re going to Scotland because it really is like the center of so much innovation. It’s this teeny country with this really interesting past that I think is pretty misunderstood. And there’s so many parallels to the experiences we’re having now. As I read the history of Scotland, so I’m fascinated by it. I’m really interested in this trip. There’s so much innovation there and so much change that happened there. And so I’m curious what lessons we can apply to our conversations and the work that we do together. And with that, I am just so grateful for you for joining us this morning. I know we both missed Michael and would have loved to have him as part of this conversation, so we will have to do it again. But with that, thanks to all the listeners who joined us, and thanks for joining us on Class Disrupted. Until next time.

“No one would touch what I touched because they thought someone that looked like me must have been, like, riddled with disease,” Adii said. One peer told her to change her skin color like pop superstar Michael Jackson did.

After that experience, she went through the rest of elementary and middle school “actively trying to rid myself of any association” with what she perceived as “Black stereotypes.” She studied hard and chose not to wear the Batik clothing she bought when visiting her father’s relatives in Indonesia. Being different weighed on her.

But when, as a high school junior, she first attended a club meeting for students of color to connect with each other, she felt an instant sense of relief. It was the only time in her life she had been in a room with no white people, she realized, other than with family. The group was created to allow Black, Hispanic, Asian and Indigenous students to share about their experiences navigating the over 90% white, 800-person school.

“It felt so validating to just be in a room where you don’t have to give this huge backstory or explain yourself,” Adii said. “It made me feel like all of these little experiences, it’s not just happening to me. All these people can relate.”

Gatherings like the one described by the high school senior — often called “affinity groups” — have long been a strategy that schools, universities and workplaces employ to support community members who are from minority identities. But recently, those programs have become the target of pushback from conservative parent organizations, part of a wider GOP effort to oppose equity measures in K-12 education.

In early January, Parents Defending Education, a national nonprofit formed in 2021 to counter what it sees as indoctrination in schools, filed three federal civil rights complaints alleging that school-based affinity groups for people of color unfairly discriminate against white students and educators. The approach serves to “segregate” youth by race, violating the Civil Rights Act and the equal protections clause of the 14th Amendment, the organization’s letters say.

“Public schools that maintain policies or programs that discriminate against students on the basis of race are unconstitutional, period,” spokesperson Erika Sanzi wrote to The 74 in an email. 

Those complaints come on the heels of the organization has filed since 2021 against districts in , , , , and over similar opportunities for students and educators of color. In the 2021-22 school year, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights received more complaints than ever before, . Some 2,900 of those alleged racial discrimination, but federal officials do not track how many claimed discrimination against white students.

Two of Parents Defending Education’s most recent complaints concern student groups in majority-white school districts — Ashland, Oregon and Shelburne, Vermont — and the third flags a staff group in Portland, Maine, where just over half of all students are youth of color compared to just 14% of all educators.

“Within such a homogenous workforce, affinity groups are one way to help people who may experience marginalization feel welcome and supported,” said Barrett Wilkinson, director of diversity, equity and inclusion for Portland Public Schools. The group for teachers of color has run since 2017 when it was founded by educators, he said, and “the district absolutely supports it and is proud of these kinds of efforts.”

Legal landscape

While affinity groups can be formed around any number of identities — religion, sexual orientation or political outlook, for example — school-based gatherings for students of a specific race or races may fall into murky legal water, scholars say.

According to Derek Black, education law professor at the University of South Carolina, there are two central considerations for determining the constitutionality of race-based affinity groups. First, does the program actually exclude certain students or educators based on race? And second, if so, does the race-conscious policy serve to remedy existing inequities?

Some affinity groups, while catered to students of certain races, do not actually exclude those of other identities. In Shelburne, Vermont, district spokesperson Bonnie Birdsall said all existing affinity groups, including the one for people of color and a sexuality and gender alliance, welcome “any student who would like to be involved.”

Others, however, are open only to students of certain races. Those programs are subject to “strict scrutiny,” said Black. A 2015 from the Obama administration’s Office for Civil Rights found an Illinois high school’s assembly for only Black students in the wake of was unconstitutional.

That precedent, when applied to the question around affinity groups, is “persuasive, but not exactly on point,” said Maryam Ahranjani, professor at the University of New Mexico’s School of Law. Affinity groups have a different structure and purpose than assemblies, she points out, and the Obama-era decision is “not binding law.”

When school-based programs are racially differentiated, their legality may depend on whether they serve to fix prior injustice, said Black, which can create “a legitimate, compelling interest” for their existence in the eyes of the law.

“The state can clearly engage in race-conscious actions … to remedy discrimination,” the law professor said.

Though the toll can be hard to quantify, researchers have that students of color in predominantly white schools typically face challenges such as a lack of curricular materials that reflect their racial identity and more strict disciplinary punishments than their white peers.

Thus, it matters whether racially differentiated affinity groups actually help address those problems, Black said. Over a dozen academic studies examine the gatherings, and most find wide-reaching benefits, including participants reporting , and .

The legal landscape could shift, however, should the U.S. Supreme Court, as is widely expected, this spring in higher education admissions — another race-based policy meant to address longstanding disparities. Such a ruling would “chip away” at the legal basis for race-conscious policies in schools, Ahranjani said.

The U.S. Department of Education said it could not comment on when the agency expects to issue a response to the Parents Defending Education complaints or what actions it may take.

When asked whether her organization would consider filing a lawsuit should it disagree with the agency’s response, Sanzi replied that “a number of options exist to remedy racial discrimination in public schools.”

‘Doesn’t hurt me one iota’

Jesse Tauriac is chief diversity officer and an associate professor of psychology at Lasell University. There, he leads several affinity groups on campus — including gatherings for first-generation students, student athletes, students of color and for conservative students at the predominantly liberal school.

The groups spur “more candid and frank” conversations, he said, and afterward, students “feel better equipped to engage and speak with people who have different perspectives.”

A student who participated in the group for conservatives on campus wrote an email to Tauriac after the experience: “As a conservative student who didn’t always believe that diversity and inclusion meant including my voice, you have proved me wrong.”

Whether affinity groups gather students of one political stripe or a shared racial identity, some familiar with the model say it confuses them why those who don’t share in those attributes or experiences would want to join.

Wilkinson, the director of equity for Portland schools, who is white, said it “wouldn’t occur” to him to want to participate in the district’s group for staff of color. “Why would I insert myself in that way?” he said.

Gail Burnett, an English as a second language teacher in Portland, penned an in the Portland Press Herald.

“As a white person, I don’t qualify for the [Black, Indigenous, people of color] Community Circle. I’m not offended by this any more than I would be offended if I found out that I couldn’t join a men’s support group or a group for staff members who are left-handed, or survivors of child abuse, or flute players. This is about them, not me. It doesn’t hurt me one iota,” she wrote.

However, Sanzi explained that her organization filed the complaints because “racial discrimination hurts everyone whether they are being included or excluded based on their skin color.”

Blake Jordan is a senior at Southern Oregon University and an active participant at his school’s Black Student Union. The college is in the same small city as the Ashland School District named in the legal complaint. His organization “focuses on Black experiences,” but is open to students of any race who want to learn about Black history, art and culture.

“I don’t think it’s the correct approach to make strong divisions along identities,” Jordan said. He acknowledged, however, that there’s a difference between higher education, where students generally have the maturity to center Black students’ voices in the club, and K-12, where white youth “might change the dynamic” by failing to fully listen to the experiences of their peers of color.

Adii, in Vermont, has tried to think about what it would mean for her high school’s affinity group to welcome white students. During the school day, she’s the only person of color in most of her classrooms. In those settings, she feels “a lot less apt to speak up around ideas of race, because I don’t really want to get met with pity from white people … and I also don’t want to feel invalidated,” she said.

The gathering for students of color, 40 minutes twice per week during a free period, is the only time she’s surrounded by people who directly relate to her experiences. Having white peers in the room could “undermine” the club’s purpose, she said.

“The conversations would just have to completely change and we’d have to kind of cater what we were doing based off white people — and that’s what I’ve been doing my whole life.”