Bay Area school district splurged $315,000 on CHAKRA CLEARER while forcing teachers to sweep their own floors and deal with cockroach infestation

A San Francisco school district with a major learning gap has spent $315,000 on an “energy healer” who practices “chakra cleansing,” while teachers are left to sweep their own floors and deal with a nasty cockroach infestation.

A group of parents recently discovered that the Mountain View Whisman School District paid ‘Master Energy Healer & Intuitive Guide’ Alycia Diggs-Chavis to lead 160 guided meditation sessions for the district’s leadership team, the SF chronicle reported.

While her Zen sessions have helped school administrators become more focused, engaged, productive and efficient, both parents and the 4,500 students have been left to fend for themselves.

Frustrated parents also learned that the school district, led by Principal Ayindé Rudolph, hired a public relations firm and an executive coach to guide staff.

A former teacher said the school district never spent any money on it, leaving her to become the janitor of her own vermin-infested classroom while the school administrators had the day off to attend their subsidized programs.

“These decisions have resulted in a very high turnover of teachers in the district, including myself,” the teacher, who asked to remain anonymous, said of Rudolph, who makes about $370,000 a year.

For years, parents thought their school district budgets were going toward essential programs for their children. But when it became apparent that several electives in high school were about to be eliminated, they began to take stock of the costs themselves.

They soon found a staggering $189,000 school board-approved contract for the spiritual healer’s services. Over the course of three years, the district paid Diggs-Chavis just over $315,000, the SF Chronicle reported.

“We assumed that the board was doing its job,” said a parent who also wished to remain anonymous.

“Why are we spending all this money? It’s not going to teachers. It’s not helping our kids one bit.”

Further investigation into the district’s roughly $110 million budget has angered parents across the country who were awarded multi-million dollar contracts.

Washington DC-based PR firm Woodberry Associates has been paid $180,000 a year to promote them “both locally and nationally.”

The district paid more than $600,000 a year for leadership coaching, in addition to hiring Woodbury Associates to advertise for them and “prepare press releases, statements and other media materials to enhance the district’s success.”

“It’s mind-boggling. We’re so angry here,” the parent added.

Additionally, the district has hired an internal public information officer, whose salary in 2022 was more than $264,000, according to state records viewed by the outlet.

In response to the district’s spending spree, Rudolph told the SF Chronicle that hosting meditation sessions for his staff is essential for stress relief and is backed by “evidence-based research.”

‘All the tech industries around us are doing it.

“How well our schools perform depends on how well our teachers and leaders perform… I think we’ve reached a point where all organizations need to take employee stress seriously,” he added.

He added that while the contract states that Diggs-Chavis is there for the supervisors, teachers can also use her services.

Rudolph said all employees in his district, including teachers, have access to executive coach Peter Gorman, the former superintendent of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School District in North Carolina, where Rudolph was superintendent.

Gorman has charged the district $37,000-$50,000 a year and up to $12,000 in travel expenses since Rudolph hired him in 2015.

He is the president and CEO of Peter Gorman Leadership Associates LLC, which “provides executive support and organizational development to principals, senior leadership teams, and school boards across America,” according to its website.

“I say we spend a lot of money to make sure our employees stay healthy,” Rudolph said. “I think the well-being of our employees is worth every dollar.”

But the former teacher who worked in the district eventually left because she felt like she wasn’t a priority to Rudolph.

In addition to the terrible classroom conditions, she said many teachers stepped in as substitutes after the school district said they would not pay teacher compensation.

“There was a huge burnout because we had to step in all the time and the classes were too big,” she says.

She added that it also became difficult to deal with the students as management withdrew to relax.

“There was no one to turn to if there was a fight or bullying or a threat from a student,” she said. She has since moved to another district.

Another anonymous teacher expressed similar concerns, specifically highlighting that the school district was spending very little money on teachers, yet adding more staff and costs to the office.

‘Whenever someone expressed concern about something, you were immediately cut off.

“The biggest problem was that they didn’t feel like they cared about children,” the teacher admitted.

They also said Rudolph’s high salary in the small elementary school district didn’t come close to matching teachers’ salaries.

Rudolph told the newspaper he was aware of the findings and parents’ concerns and planned to discuss them in a presentation Thursday evening.

During the meeting of the Supervisory Board, Rudolph emphasized that the existing programs are also intended for teachers.

“Our school district spends a significant amount of money on both our teachers and our administrators to ensure that they can perform at their best and close the achievement gap,” he said.

Due to “changing economic conditions,” he announced he will pause or reduce sessions with Chavis-Diggs and Gorman.

DailyMail.com reached out to Rudolph, Diggs-Chavis Woodberry Associates and Gorman for comment.