Dupage Policy Journal

Concerned parent Tom Chavez is calling out the Elmhurst School District 205 school board over its alleged lack of transparency over the use Corwin’s Deep Equity program in its curriculum. 

"They had a teacher training this summer that was based on Corwin Deep Equity Training. So if you go and read about it, it is critical race theory," Chavez told DuPage Policy Journal. "We're teaching our teachers to teach the CRT pedagogy, right? That's what that's about. You're teaching the teachers to teach through the lens of racism."

Corwin was contracted by the school board for $46,000 to provide teacher training, but will not disclose the contents of that training. 

Elmhurst Patch reported it was denied a Freedom of Information Act request that was sent to Elmhurst School District 205.

"These materials are valuable and protected trade secrets of Corwin," Kathy Schmidt, the district's Freedom of Information Act officer, said in a letter to Patch.

Chavez, who has been an Elmhurst resident for 16 years and has graduated two kids from the district and has a third in school still, said he disagrees with the lack of transparency.

"Taxpayer funds were used to fund that teacher training and then then you're saying it is proprietary and I can't tell you exactly how we're teaching the teachers to teach your children?" Chavez said. "Do you think most people are going to say, ‘Oh, yeah, I'm OK with that?’ Probably not. Right? So I said, ‘Come clean with people. Explain to them what you're doing. And if they find it offensive, you need to change course." 

"There are certainly people in this district that are perfectly fine with this far left ideology being taught to kids. We're not. And the school has to be for everyone, not just certain people. And so that's kind of where we're at."

According to Corwin, the Deep Equity curriculum is based on Gary Howard's research, which Chavez said suggests that white people are racist.

Chavez, who is Latino, said that in practice, Howard and Corwin claim that white people are racist simply because they are white, which is wrong.

Corwin says its Deep Equity program is based on the work of Gary Howard has been quoted as saying white people "are collectively bound and unavoidably complicit in the arrangements of dominance that have systematically favored our racial group over others."  

"Corwin Deep Equity is completely offensive," Chavez said. "If you go to the Corwin website, you know their mission statement – the disparity in student learning is driven by white supremacy, that kind of nonsense. It’s systemic racism and it can't be poverty. It can't be not having two parents in the home. It's got to be racism?"

Chavez previously questioned the school’s use of Howard Zinn’s leftist framing of American history.