DOJ Spent Over $100 Million Pushing DEI, Restorative Justice in Classrooms

The Department of Justice spent over $100 million on proposals promoting woke content in classrooms between 2021 and 2024, according to a new report first obtained by The Daily Wire.

An investigation conducted by Parents Defending Education (PDE) found that the Biden DOJ awarded over $100,113,942 through 102 grants, throughout 36 states, impacting 946 school districts and upwards of 3 million K-12 students. Those funds were spent on proposals promoting restorative justice practices, social and emotional learning practices, and diversity, equity, and inclusion practices in the classroom over the past four years, The Daily Wire has learned.

The funds were awarded through the Justice Department’s STOP School Violence Program, which provides grant money to school districts, nonprofits, and city and state governments through projects that “increase school safety by implementing solutions that will improve school climate.”

That climate phrasing, according to PDE, typically means replacing exclusionary discipline (removing the disrupter from the classroom) with restorative practices (bringing the offender and victim together to discuss what happened and “repair harm”) or social and emotional learning {snip}

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It also notes that many of the projects funded by the DOJ explicitly named goals of focusing on “disproportionately impacted” groups, such as those who identify as LGBTQ and BIPOC (an acronym for black, indigenous, and people of color).

The PDE report details how the Justice Department gave the Minnesota Department of Education almost $2 million to “create safe learning environments where practices of anti-racism and anti-oppression are embedded.” {snip}

In Pennsylvania, the DOJ awarded $1,785,773 to a Penn State project focused on decreasing cyberbullying in K-12 schools to “provide an opportunity to meaningfully advance equity in violence prevention {snip}”

Also in Pennsylvania, according to the report, the DOJ granted $1,688,668 to a collaborative program between organizations including Temple University and The School District of Philadelphia, that looked to decrease violence by teaching youth about “community policing, trauma informed conflict emphasizing racial/historical and intergenerational trauma, impacts of social media on conflict and conflict escalation and management, anti-bias education, restorative practices.”

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