Kansas teacher rips district for diversity training amid teacher shortage: ‘Repeated white shaming’

A Kansas teacher ripped a school district for their mandatory diversity training amid a teacher shortage and challenges to recruit talent.

Caedran Sullivan was an English teacher employed in the Shawnee Mission School District [SMSD] for 15 years.

“I can no longer stay silent about the state of our schools. I will be attacked and threatened, but for the good of our district and the students with whom we are entrusted, I must speak out. This is too important,” Sullivan wrote in an op-ed published by The Lion.

She blasted the school district for “repeated White shaming” and “woke ideology.”

Sullivan alleges that SMSD requires employees to attend Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) training and workshops centered around critical race theory and invoking social justice causes to “decolonize” the classroom.

“There is repeated white shaming and a preoccupation with white people as the ‘oppressor,’ including staff field trips with a focus on ‘systemic racism.’ The white saviorism and virtue-signaling at DEI meetings is so condescending that many minorities and other staff members have stopped attending,” Sullivan wrote. “Our district is no longer academically focused. We are doing our students a disservice by allowing a biased curriculum to take over. If parents knew what goes on in our schools, the majority would be appalled.”

Sullivan added that such indoctrination does not help amid a worsening teacher shortage that forced SMSD to pay $3.5 million to out-of-state agencies to recruit and retain more educators.

“We are losing good teachers because of an imposed divisive rhetoric that does not inspire mutual goodwill,” Sullivan wrote.

She went on to say, “In my school alone, three teacher-coaches left in March and recently, in one day, four more teachers said they are contemplating leaving the profession.”

SMSD presides over five high schools, five middle schools, 34 elementary schools, and six instructional centers. SMSD did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

Since the pandemic, school districts across the country were struggling to fill hundreds of open teaching positions in the remaining weeks of summer before the 2022-2023 school year kicked off.

School districts across the country have been struggling with an exodus of teachers since the pandemic, as teachers reported burnout stemming from the uncertainty during lockdowns.

A survey conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics found that 44% of public schools report having full- or part-time teacher vacancies.

The survey, published in March 2022, also found that 61% of public schools reporting at least one vacancy cited the pandemic for the open jobs. Most of the vacancies were due to resignations, not retirement, the survey reported.

About 300,000 public school teachers and staff have left the field between February 2020 and May 2022, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A survey from the National Education Association in February found that 55% of teachers reported that they are thinking about leaving the profession, and 79% of teachers report dissatisfaction with their careers, according to a July American Federation of Teachers survey.

* Article From: Fox News

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