We support our Publishers and Content Creators. You can view this story on their website by CLICKING HERE.

It appears public school officials in Wisconsin’s fourth-largest school district have taken the divisive DEI agenda to the extreme — to the detriment of a young student with dyslexia.

The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) is threatening legal action against the Green Bay Area School District over a “School Success” plan that “prioritizes some racial groups over others.” 

Colbey Decker claims her dyslexic elementary school-aged son was denied reading resources because he is white. The district, according to WILL’s education counsel Cory Brewer, said Green Bay public school officials have never denied the discriminatory initiative that prioritizes educational resources to black, Hispanic and “First Nation” students over others. 

“A lot of school districts like Green Bay are well-intentioned but that doesn’t change the law, which demands students be treated fairly without regard to race,” Brewer told The Federalist Friday in a phone interview. “Not only is it immoral, it’s illegal. We want to see it end, both here and across Wisconsin and across the country.” 

‘I was Speechless’

In a letter last week to Green Bay Superintendent Vicki Bayer, the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty warned that the district’s “racially discriminatory policy harms students in need of support.” 

“The district’s literacy policy establishes ‘priority groups’ by race — namely, Black, Hispanic, and Native American students — and states that the school will conduct ‘intentional work educating our focus students, prioritizing additional resources to First Nations, Black, and Hispanic students,’” the letter asserts. WILL alleges that the district’s different treatment of students based on race violates the U.S. Constitution and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. 

Colbey Decker worries the policy adopted by Green Bay’s King Elementary School has locked her son, diagnosed with dyslexia in 2022, out of educational services because he is white. 

WILL asserts that, despite the parent’s “persistent advocacy, her son’s needs were overlooked for almost a full year, and then his access to essential literacy interventions was delayed.” The boy was eventually placed on a wait list for an inferior reading intervention program, according to the letter. Decker was informed this fall that her son would finally receive one-on-one intervention, but the sessions would be conducted in small groups. 

“This continued lack of adequate support has had a significant impact on her son. He struggles with reading across all subjects,” WILL informed the superintendent, whose contract was recently approved by the school board, removing the “interim” tag from her job title. 

Decker said school officials implied that her son would have received the specialized resources early if he were a member of the “priority” group.

“I was speechless. I think we need to help every student in need, and using the guise of ‘diversity’ simply creates more division and hurts all students,” the concerned mother said in a press release. 

The Green Bay Area Public School District did not return The Federalist’s request for comment Friday afternoon. In a statement to the Green Bay Press Gazette, the district seemed to parse language about its “School Success” plan. 

“…[W]e can state unequivocally that the District does not have a policy that includes the language included in the letter. All District policies must be approved by the Board of Education and no such policy language exists,” the district said in the statement.

The Madison Metropolitan Area School District attempted to use the same kind of semantics in efforts to block the Milwaukee law firm’s open records request. WILL sought MMSD records related to a whistleblower’s allegations about a “racially discriminatory policy of treating black students more favorably than students of other races.” Madison schools spectacularly lost that lawsuit.  

WILL is demanding that Green Bay “abandon its discriminatory policy and return its focus to serving all students based on need — not race.” If not, the law firm says it will “take appropriate legal action.” 

‘At the Expense of Children’s Education’

Americans have spent a lot of money on divisive and racist Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives in recent years, whether they’ve wanted to or not. The Biden administration has pumped more than $1 billion of DEI into America’s schools, according to a new report from Parents Defending Education, a conservative non-profit organization with a mission to “reclaim our schools from activists imposing harmful agendas.” 

The study, first reported by Fox News Digital, shows Biden’s Department of Education has spent: 

› $489,883,797 for race-based hiring

› $343,337,286 for DEI programming

› $169,301,221 for DEI mental health initiatives 

Parents Defending Education reviewed publicly available data from the radicalized government agency and tracked 229 DEI-based grants sent to 42 states and the District of Columbia. The grants reached some 6.7 million students, according to the report. 

The numbers are troubling. Among its findings, the report notes: 

› Multiple grants feature programming that advances race-based teacher recruiting, hiring, and training, including the use of race-based affinity groups.

› Several grants were issued for youth activism programming widely used in far-left ethnic studies courses.

› The University of Iowa received a grant award of $1,261,718 to train 40 elementary teachers to “enact equity-centered education” in partner K-12 districts.

› The School District of Philadelphia was given $3,973,175 for its restorative justice program modeled after Oakland Unified School District’s (CA), and a program advisor is a far-left activist and former Communist Party USA member.

› A Michigan school district spent over $38,000 on an equity consultant for a one-day professional development and copies of their book.

Rhyen Staley, Parents Defending Education researcher, told Fox News Digital that the report’s numbers more than likely don’t cover the full extent of the funding. He said the Biden administration has pushed leftist dogma in U.S. schools over “rigorous, proven methods of instruction.” American students have suffered steep declines in core educational categories, and are lagging further behind their peers in other advanced nations.  

“The only people or groups to benefit from the enormous amount of grant funding are the universities, administrators, and DEI consultants, at the expense of children’s education,” Staley told the news outlet. “This needs to change by placing children’s learning at the forefront of education, instead of prioritizing race-based policies and DEI.”

“Multi-Billion Dollar Industry’

States across the country have been attempting to stamp out discriminatory DEI initiatives that have popped up like weeds over the past decade. The Republican-controlled Wisconsin State Legislature last session passed a resolution calling for a constitutional amendment that would check the leftist efforts in Wisconsin. The measure must pass again this session before it heads to voters. 

President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to roll back the Biden administration’s sweeping Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion directives. One of Biden’s first orders of business as president was rescinding Trump’s executive order against “race and sex stereotyping and scapegoating” — i.e. DEI. 

Journalist and anti-woke crusader Christopher Rufo has had conversations with Trump’s transition team about ways to drive the scourge of DEI out America’s institutions of higher education. 

He told Fox News Channel host Jesse Waters late last month that Trump has the opportunity to do what Gov. Ron DeSantis has done with DEI in Florida “on a national scale.” Rufo noted that in 2019, during Trump’s first administration, there was about $19 million in federal contracts with DEI language attached to them. Last year, in the Biden-Harris administration, that number soared to $1 billion. 

“This is a multi-billion dollar industry. It has now thousands of federal employees practicing racism, demanding segregation, and thinking that the United States is a fundamentally racist country,” Rufo said. “The president can put a stop to that on Day One. He can abolish DEI and restore color-blind equality once and for all.” 

But the DEI invasion, at least for now, rolls on. And it’s causing systemic destruction in its path.

“Delays by the Green Bay Area Public School District — with resources being prioritized for students of certain races — have placed a child with a dyslexia diagnosis on an uneven playing field to simply access adequate literacy resources,” Brewer, the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty attorney, said in a press release. “Prioritizing students of certain races inherently excludes other students who are in need. We plan to exhaust every legal option against this school district to end this discriminatory practice.”

Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.