PRESS RELEASE: New DFI Report Exposes Georgia School District’s Hidden DEI Agenda

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Defense of Freedom Institute for Policy Studies (DFI) today released a new report exposing how City Schools of Decatur (CSD), a public school district in Georgia, embedded racially discriminatory diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) ideology throughout its policies, teacher training, curriculum, and school operations — and then quietly scrubbed the most incriminating materials from public view under the threat of federal civil rights enforcement.

The report, All the Woke We Cannot See: One school district’s foray into discriminatory DEI and response to current federal civil rights enforcement, authored by DFI Senior Policy and Regulatory Counsel Paul Zimmerman, details how CSD spent years building a race-centered “equity” regime. The district trained educators to view their work through a racial lens, established school-based equity teams, pushed efforts to “decolonize” the curriculum, and maintained official resources that framed racial disparities in school discipline and achievement as the result of “whiteness” and “white supremacy culture.”

When the U.S. Department of Education began requiring school districts to comply with federal civil rights law, CSD did not abandon its discriminatory DEI agenda. Instead, the district briefly rescinded equity-related policies, later reinstated them, and quietly removed or sanitized race-based materials from its website.

One school board member said the quiet part out loud. As the district considered removing equity language to avoid risking federal funding, As the CSD Board Vice Chair  said, “I don’t think words matter more than kids. It’s not stopping us from doing the work—it’s stopping us from using the words.” He added, “I support compliance, not conformity (there is a difference) with these changes.”

“City Schools of Decatur is a case study in how discriminatory DEI practices can go underground to evade enforcement,” said Zimmerman. “CSD’s leaders built a system that made race central to teacher training, curriculum, and district decision-making. Then, when a change of presidential administration put that system at risk, they changed the words and hid the evidence while keeping the framework for discriminatory DEI in place. No matter who is in the White House, school districts must not treat students or teachers differently on the basis of race, sex, or any other protected characteristic.”

Among the report’s key findings:

• CSD trained nearly all teachers and administrators, in a seminar called “Beyond Diversity” and its “Courageous Conversations About Race” protocol, to blame “whiteness” for racial disparities in schools and on society.

• CSD established an equity team in each school consisting of self-identified “anti-racist” leaders who pressured their colleagues to center race in their teaching and decisions to topple white supremacy in the district.
  
• District officials directed schools to “decolonize” the curriculum, as the district developed the Justice, Action, Diversity, and Equity, or JADE, Program, as an anti-racism and social justice course for middle school students.
  
• Official CSD equity newsletters and resources promoted racist materials, including a “white supremacy culture pyramid,” anti-racism indoctrination, critical race theory in classrooms, and articles encouraging educators and students to resist “whiteness.”
  
• Faced with the enforcement priorities of the Education Department, CSD removed or buried public-facing equity resources and revised language on its website but did not permanently rescind the policies and practices that drove its DEI agenda.

“Federal civil rights law makes clear that public schools may not sort, train, discipline, reward, or treat students and teachers differently based on their race,” said Bob Eitel, president and co-founder of DFI. “City Schools of Decatur cannot evade the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution or Title VI of the Civil Rights Act simply by erasing words from its website while leaving discriminatory policies and practices in place.”

The report calls on federal and state civil rights officials to investigate CSD and mandate that the district formally rescind its racially discriminatory policies and revise its practices in conformity with the Constitution and Title VI.   

To read the report, click here.