by Rose Williams
Five east metro school districts voted to stop paying a leftist nonprofit that charges massive sums for “equity audits.” This likely spells the end of the group, called “Equity Alliance Minnesota.”
Equity Alliance Minnesota charges member school districts $5 per student per year, plus other program fees, to take stock of how equitable they are and provide suggestions to improve. In Centennial Schools, for example, the Alliance would have made $125,000 during the first year of working together if outraged parents hadn’t intervened. This would have included a $50,700 equity audit and a $28,000 equity action plan.
Forest Lake, Roseville, Inver Grove Heights, South St. Paul, and White Bear Lake school districts have all decided that the left-wing nonprofit is not right for them, with each voting to terminate their membership with the group next summer.
In the absence of these five contracts, the controversial left-wing group will go under. Mike Boguszewski is the Alliance’s board chair. He told the Pioneer Press they’re running out of money and don’t have enough income to “overcome that dwindling of fund balance.”
School districts say termination of their partnership with Equity Alliance does not mean they don’t value equity, but that they can anticipate equity needs with their own staff and no longer need to pay another organization to perform audits and training.
Equity Alliance came onto the scene 10 years ago but caught the public eye last year after parents in the Sartell-St. Stephen district caught wind of the “equity surveys” their students were allegedly asked to take in secret. Students reported that the questions were racially and sexually charged. Students reported being told they were not allowed to “repeat any of the questions to our parents.”
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Rose Williams is an assistant editor for Alpha News.
