A kindergarten teacher who publicly questioned his school’s spending of $250,000 on a “Woke Kindergarten” curriculum for “distorting whiteness” amid declining math and literacy rates has been suspended.
Hayward Unified School District teacher Tiger Craven-Neeley said officials told him Thursday not to return to his classroom at Glassbrook Elementary until further notice.
He said he was told the suspension was in effect while the district investigates allegations of “unprofessional conduct,” following a tense meeting in which a female colleague put her hand in his face and yelled that he was “a danger” to children.
Craven-Neeley, who is gay and describes himself as a liberal, put the school in the spotlight after questioning the decision to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on the controversial curriculum. It’s been described as an “abolitionist early learning system” designed to eradicate white supremacy and disrupt racism, with non-binary founder Akiea Gross ranting on her Instagram about how she thinks Israel and the US have no right to exist to have.
After federal money was spent on the program, the Hayward school saw math proficiency among its 474 students drop to a new low of just 4 percent and the literacy rate to just 12 percent.
Tiger Craven-Neeley (pictured) was suspended after raising concerns about the $250,000 Woke Kindergarten curriculum offered at his school
The curriculum was designed by Woke Kindergarten founder Akiea “Ki” Gross as an “abolitionist early learning system”
Woke Kindergarten is blatant about his political leanings, with his social media pages littered with images about abolishing the police, anti-Israel posts and even advocating the abolition of money
Craven-Neeley claims he was told to leave during a tense meeting in which another staff member shoved a hand in his face and called him a threat to the school, a story corroborated by another staff member in the San Francisco Chronicle.
“There was so much anger toward me,” he told the outlet. ‘I explained my position. They talked over me.
‘I was shocked. This is my school. I didn’t do anything inappropriate. I left. I was very shaky.’
On Thursday, the teacher was called to a virtual conference and was advised to bring a union representative before being told he was being placed on indefinite leave.
“It’s like a bitter-paying vacation with taxpayer money,” he said. ‘They don’t take the students into account at all.’
He added that he worries: “They’re going to twist things to justify retaliation, or try to appease the staff, or they’re tired of me being a whistleblower or all of the above.”
Craven-Neeley claims he tried to talk to school staff about his concerns about Woke Kindergarten before heading out.
He insists he is not conservative and has previously filed a lawsuit after bosses tried to ban him from mentioning his man in class.
The philosophy of the program of ‘abolitionist education’, aimed at children of primary school age, revolves around the idea that the education system as it is, steeped in racism and other oppressive structures, cannot be reformed.
Instead, it advocates “a kind of starting over,” Zeus Leonardo, an education professor at UC Berkeley, told the San Francisco Chronicle.
Craven-Neeley claims he was suspended after a tense meeting in which another staff member pointed the finger in his face and said he was a threat to the school
The “Woke Kindergarten” program states its mission as an “abolitionist early learning ecosystem” that trains teachers to eradicate white supremacy, disrupt racism and oppression, which are barriers to learning
Glassbrook Elementary in Hayward remains at the state’s lowest performing level on the Comprehensive School Improvement list
Woke Kindergarten is blatant about her political leanings, with social media pages littered with images about abolishing the police, anti-Israel posts, and even advocating the abolition of money.
One such lesson the program offers to elementary school children is the “question” that asks students to think about “if the United States were to withdraw the Israeli army, how could this money be used to rebuild Palestine?” ‘
Woke Kindergarten also teaches children a “wake word of the day,” such as “ceasefire,” to educate them on “language of resistance… introducing children to liberating vocabulary in a way they can easily digest, understand and, above all, use in their criticism of the system.’
The for-profit company was founded by non-binary teacher Akiea “Ki” Gross, who uses these pronouns.
Gross holds far-left views, including imagining a world “free of the American empire and free of Israel,” which she previously referred to as an “invented place.”
In an Instagram post defining the word ceasefire, they said: ‘One place people are demanding a permanent ceasefire for is Palestine, because they are occupied or controlled by a made-up place called Israel, where settlers called Zionists are harming and killing the Palestinian people who have always lived on the land.”
Gross holds far-left views, including imagining a world “free of the American empire and free of Israel,” which she previously referred to as an “invented place.”
One of the recent “wake words of the day” posted to the company’s Instagram was “armistice”
Since the story made headlines, the school and district have been bombarded with “threatening and racist” messages and phone calls, spokesman Michael Bazeley said.
He added that he could not comment on Gross’ personal political or social views and declined to discuss Craven-Neeley’s suspension.
But he said, “We would not put any employee on leave as any form of retaliation or to suppress anyone’s right to free speech.”
Bazeley did not comment further on why the whistleblower was ordered to stay home from work.