“There are numerous other affinity groups offered across the secondary schools, including Asian, Spanish, Israel and French cultural clubs, AGSAs, Jewish Student Union, Black Student Union, ASL Club and Best Buddies.”
The Arlington, Virginia-based group Parents Defending Education (PDE) filed a complaint with the Department of Education Office for Civil Rights – alleging that Lower Merion School District discriminates against some students and in favor of others, based on race, color, or national origin. According to PDE, the district’s discrimination victims are white children who are not invited to participate in various LMSD affinity groups, as opposed to children of color, who are invited.
Lower Merion School District Statement
The Network for Public Education, an organization not without its own biases, recently released a report – Merchants of Deception: Parent Props and Their Defenders in which PDE is featured prominently.
From the report:
Parents Defending Education was incorporated as an IRS 501(c)(3) nonprofit in Virginia on January 21, 2021, with Nicole Neily as incorporator. As such a new organization, little is yet known for certain about funders. But there are clues. On January 28, 2022, PDE filed its annual report with Virginia authorities. Board members include Edward Blum, Karol Markowicz, Nicole Neily, Kenneth Marcus, and Ian Lindquist. Blum is a legal activist whom the ACLU describes as “the man who wants to kill affirmative action in higher education.” He also was a key strategist behind Shelby v. Holder, the Supreme Court case that eviscerated Voting Rights Act protections for minority voters.9 Markowicz is a conservative columnist for Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post. Neily, a board member and president, is an established political operative with Koch-affiliated non-profit interest groups.
According to Sourcewatch, a project of the Center for Media and Democracy, Neily has previously worked with Koch affiliates, the Franklin News Foundation, Cato Institute, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Center for Financial Privacy and Human Rights, and the Independent Women’s Forum. She has also served on the boards of Young Voices and Young Voices for Liberty.10 She is a “volunteer instructor” at the Leadership Institute (which handles trainings and conference activities for Moms for Liberty).
Neily has a background in public relations and communications work; many of the supposed grassroots education reform leaders have extensive backgrounds in communications. She was also the initial president of Speech First, a Koch-connected legal interest that files lawsuits against universities’ affirmative action and bias response policies.
PDE’s director of outreach Erika Sanzi presents herself as a Rhode Island mother, former educator, and ex-school board member. She omits that before joining PDE she was on the books of the pro-voucher and pro-charter Fordham Institute and earning $120,000 from the billionaire-funded Education Post. For PDE major vendors, Neily immediately turned to contractors who had worked for Speech First: the Republican law firm Consovoy McCarthy, paid $950,000 by Free Speech in 2018, and the communications firm Creative Response Concepts, paid $106,000 in 2018.13 From the start, PDE was promoting itself as a grassroots volunteer organization. Affording such contractors right away belies that.
“We just all work from home,” Neily told the Columbus (OH) Dispatch. “We’re all working moms.” PDE announced its launch via Twitter on March 30, 2021, and immediately took up Christopher Rufo’s anti-Critical Race Theory campaign.
The very next day, its emergence was reported by Fox News. PDE’s announcement quickly reverberated through the right-wing media echo chamber with coverage in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Examiner, and the Federalist. By May 3, the moms working from home were getting coverage in the Washington Post.
In June 2021, Neily explained to the conservative Daily Caller how PDE thrusts (usually anonymous) parent complaints into right-wing media: “Maybe they don’t know how to get it in the right hands, but we do. We know a lot of reporters, and we’re happy to share those things.
Who has Lower Merion School District Harmed?
PDE’s complaint does not reference any examples of LMSD parents who believe the district’s supposedly anti-white bias has harmed their children. Nor has responded yet to an email asking for information about specific victims of the racist policies that their complaint alleges that the district has implemented.