Following the murder of George Floyd, the $50,000 per year Brentwood School in Los Angeles announced that it was reimagining its purpose "with an eye toward anti-racism" and DEI. Parent Jerome Eisenberg, whose daughter attends the school, called it a "bait and switch" on parents - suing the school last year for breach of contract, civil rights violations and emotional distress.
"The curriculum change shifted away from teaching students critical thinking skills — how to think — and started indoctrinating them into what to think, based on Brentwood’s preferred political fad of the moment," reads Eisenberg's lawsuit - which entered private arbitration in November.
Eisenberg's lawyer, David Pivtorak, says he believes that legal complaints over DEI in schools have increased, and that the actual number may be understated due to arbitration clauses such as the one at Brentwood.
At Manhattan's $60,000 per year Spence School, parents Adam and Michelle Parker sued in 2019 over disciplining their daughter for posting a text exchange on Instagram in which they joked about dressing up as slaves and indigenous people for Halloween. Her punishment was a half-day "in-home- reflection," while the school held several grade-wide assemblies to shame the girl for what she had done.
While the suit was dismissed in 2020, a New York appeals court revived a breach-of-contract claim.
That said, parents of kids attending elite schools will have a hard time challenging curricula, according to Philadelphia-based education lawyer, Steven Ludwig.
Private schools that have embraced DEI are frequently also those with the strongest academic reputations and the best records of placing graduates in Ivy League and other elite colleges — which themselves have been criticized as bastions of wokeness. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, a noted anti-DEI crusader, was called out for hypocrisy when it emerged that he sent his daughters to a Houston prep school that teaches DEI.
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