President Donald Trump has launched a campaign against diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, putting policies adopted by the Riverhead Central School District, which receives millions of dollars in federal funding, potentially at odds with the administration’s views.
Trump signed executive orders at the start of his second term calling the initiatives, known shorthand as DEI, illegal, and banning them at federal agencies and businesses that contract with the federal government. (A federal judge in Maryland blocked the orders on Friday due to potential First Amendment violations. The judge also said the orders and definition of DEI were too vague.) Trump and his allies have suggested without evidence that DEI initiatives are to blame for incidents like the mid-air crash at Reagan National Airport in January that killed 67 people.
And his administration has targeted DEI in education too. In his inaugural address, Trump said the country’s education system “teaches our children to be ashamed of themselves — in many cases, to hate our country despite the love that we try so desperately to provide to them.” He has threatened to pull federal funding from schools that don’t comply with his directives to push back on what an executive order called “radical indoctrination” — raising questions for educators across the country.
The Riverhead Central School District gets millions of federal dollars every year to improve the academic standing of its low-income and special education students, and to provide free meals to students. It is also an ethnically and economically diverse school district — a majority of its students are Hispanic or Latino. The district’s administration, like many businesses and institutions across the country after George Floyd’s killing in 2020 sparked protests against racism, has embraced the growth of DEI efforts over the last few years.
So what does Riverhead’s DEI initiative look like?
The district has a DEI plan, called the “Equity in Education Plan,” which it adopted in June 2022. It has a DEI committee made up primarily of volunteers; the committee has five subcommittees that target different issues in the district, including policy, advocacy and curriculum. The committee formed after two high-profile bias incidents on school grounds in 2023.
The district also employs two administrators who oversee district DEI initiatives, along with English as a New Language services and community outreach programs.
It also gives a stipend to a high school teacher, Jamaal Boyce, to be the district’s “DEI specialist.”
“There’s a lot of misinformation about what DEI is,” Boyce said in an interview this week. “To certain people, DEI is one thing; to other people, it’s another. To certain people, it’s fantastic; to other people, it’s terrible. And what I say is, DEI — diversity, equity and inclusion — they’re just words. They’re neither positive nor negative. It just depends on how you’re viewing them.”
“So the way I look at DEI, the way the district looks at DEI is just one word. It’s just opportunity,” Boyce said. “We want to provide opportunities to our members, specifically our students, first and foremost — that’s why we’re here — to our employees and to members of the district, parents, guardians … to have an opportunity to participate in the education process.”
In practice, that means allowing students to speak their minds inside and outside of the classroom, Boyce said. Part of his job is getting students involved in the DEI committee, he said.
Public opinion on DEI is split almost in half. Pew Research Center surveys conducted last fall indicated that a growing number of Americans believe DEI at work is a bad thing. About a third of the population sees DEI practices as hurting white men, according to the survey. Opinion on DEI is even more split down political lines: a majority of Democrats and Democratic-leaning people believe it’s good thing, while more Republicans and Republican-leaning people think it’s a bad thing, the survey results show.
Trump’s executive order on education, which was signed on Jan. 29 and titled “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling,” directs the Education Department to create a plan within 90 days to end federal funding for direct or indirect support of “illegal and discriminatory treatment and indoctrination in K-12 schools, including based on gender ideology and discriminatory equity ideology.”
The order defines “discriminatory equity ideology” as anything “that treats individuals as members of preferred or disfavored groups, rather than as individuals, and minimizes agency, merit, and capability in favor of immoral generalizations.” The definition of “gender ideology” comes from a separate executive order; it is the belief in the existence of transgender people or people outside of the idea of a gender binary.
New York State Board of Regents has left DEI policies to local school districts, but has recommended a number of DEI policies for districts, including the creation of a DEI committee; acknowledging “the role racism and bigotry have played, and continue to play, in the American story;” “avoiding the ‘danger of the single story;’ and recruiting a diverse workforce, among other things.
While Boyce gives a more simplistic view of the district’s DEI efforts, the district’s adopted Equity in Education Plan provides a more expansive vision — which appears at odds with Trump’s executive order.
The plan talks about addressing implicit bias. Trump’s education executive order states that “demanding acquiescence to ‘White Privilege’ or ‘unconscious bias,’ actually promotes racial discrimination and undermines national unity.”
The plan states that teachers and district leaders should receive training on subjects related to DEI, including “critical self-reflection, disproportionality, anti-bias, developing racial literacy, combating racism and microaggressions, etc.”
Interim Superintendent Cheryl Pedisich said there has not been training for employees on DEI subjects on a district-wide level since she started as interim superintendent in October 2023. Although she said there may be training done at the building level or discussed within the DEI committee.
When asked about Trump’s executive order, Boyce said he is not focused on it. “I can’t speak to what he’s trying to do. All I can worry about is what I’m doing, what we’re doing on our end,” he said.
“The word indoctrination was used in the executive order. We are not indoctrinating anybody. That’s not our goal,” Boyce said. “If you’re providing opportunities for people to voice their opinions, well then there’s no indoctrination going on. So as far as his order, however politically people look at it, that’s not what we’re doing.”
“We want you to come in and speak your voice — voice what you’re saying, what you think,” Boyce said. “That’s the complete opposite of indoctrination.”
The DEI plan encourages the district to “Research curriculum resources that address multiple perspectives, cultures, and backgrounds.” Schools are, according to the Trump executive order, meant to “instill a patriotic admiration for our incredible Nation and the values for which we stand.“
Trump’s executive order reestablished the 1776 Commission, which was created in 2020 to promote a “patriotic” narrative of American history, and was dissolved by the Biden Administration. The commission was created to contrast the New York Time Magazine’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1619 Project, which examines the country through its history of racism and the contributions of Black Americans. In announcing the 1776 Commission in 2020, Trump called the teaching of systemic racism in classrooms “a form of child abuse.”
Boyce, a social studies teacher, is perhaps most known in the district for creating a high school course to discuss Black culture and race relations in the country called The Black Experience. Boyce said he does not endorse a particular perspective in the classroom on issues like systemic racism.
Boyce said the district does not want to bring politics into schools.
“We’re still going to hit on the topic.” Boyce said. “But it’s not like I’m saying you’re bad or this person’s bad — we’re not doing any of that. So if that were the case, we would have to revamp the entire New York state curriculum, because it’s already in the curriculum.”
“As far as we’re concerned, if we’re providing opportunities for people to be engaged and we’re trying to hear the voices of all people, that’s DEI work,” Boyce said. “And no matter what happens politically, our work will still continue, because I don’t think anybody in the district would say, don’t give opportunities to people to participate in their own unique way.”
The Riverhead Central School District last year received a little more than $13 million from the federal government, according to the district’s audit of those funds. Almost half of that amount, $6.1 million, was from the American Rescue Plan Act, the coronavirus relief package that boosted funding for schools to help address pandemic-related learning loss.
The other roughly $7 million is from a variety of federal programs. It got $1.49 million from the federal education department’s Title I program, which is given to schools enrolling low-income students; and it received $1.79 million to assist the district in teaching special education students through the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. The district also gets $3.25 million from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for nutrition assistance, including to fund free school breakfast and lunch for students.
The U.S. Education Department sent a letter on Feb. 14 informing all K-12 school districts and higher education institutions that they would pull federal funding if they did not end the use of race in “admissions, hiring, promotion, compensation, financial aid, scholarships, prizes, administrative support, discipline, housing, graduation ceremonies, and all other aspects of student, academic, and campus life.”
The Trump administration used the Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. Harvard, to justify its directives. The 2023 ruling made affirmative action admission policies at colleges illegal.
The American Civil Liberties Union, a left-leaning legal group, said in a statement that the ruling “had no bearing on K-12 education, where schools must continue to identify and address barriers to equitable learning environments.” Schools are required under federal and state civil rights laws to provide educational opportunities on an equal basis, the group noted.
Pedisich, the interim superintendent, said the district is reviewing the documents sent by the federal education department and is waiting for further guidance from New York State. “Between the federal executive orders and New York State law, there is potential conflict, and I think that puts school districts in a very tenuous position in navigating these issues,” Pedisich said.
She added that the district does not have an application process, and some of the issues addressed in the letter “are not really applicable to us as a public school system.”
She declined to comment further on the federal education department’s letter or Trump’s executive order.
“At this point, the school district has done nothing to violate any law,” she added.
Pedisich said the district’s DEI efforts have concentrated primarily on celebrating the diversity of the district community — including events for Hispanic Heritage Month and Black History Month.
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