EXCLUSIVE: Activist education group files restraining order to prevent release of woke curriculum used in Washington state teachers' training

A restraining order has been against Washington state's Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction to prevent the release of documents requested by The Post Millennial's Ari Hoffman for copies of ethnic studies curriculums that are being used to fulfill mandatory training hours for public school teachers.

The request was made via a public disclosure request, after The Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) severed ties with Washington Ethnic Studies Now, the provider of the curriculum after the agency discovered "that WAESN was not just an education-focused organization, but also a political one -- and that they had used their platform to make disparaging comments about others." 



Yet the curriculum remains on the state’s approved list of "Clock Hours Providers" for mandatory professional development of public school teachers in the state. Washington Ethnic Studies proudly proclaims that they teach critical race theory and sells the curriculum for use in schools across the US.

On Wednesday, Hoffman received an email from OSPI in response to the records request stating, "As you know, due to a previous agreement with WAESN, we notified them that we had received a request for records and that some of their copyrighted materials would be responsive to the request."

"Today they filed a complaint in Thurston County Superior Court and motion for a temporary restraining order (TRO) to prevent the release of the records. Out of abundance of caution, and at the recommendation of legal counsel, OSPI will hold off on the production of the records until the court makes a determination on the TRO."
 
The initial hearing date is set for early March.

In an October email to The Post Millennial, OSPI claimed it "does not currently have any engagements or contracts with Washington Ethnic Studies Now (WAESN), nor do we point to them as a resource for educators from our website. When it became clear to us in recent years that WAESN was not just an education-focused organization, but also a political one -- and that they had used their platform to make disparaging comments about others -- we took action to remove their materials from our website in places where the organization was listed as a resource for schools and educators."

However, the state's Professional Educator Standards Board has not yet severed ties with WESN and continues to list the agency as a clock hours provider for teachers. The board was only recently made aware of the controversial content in WESN's material.

The executive director of WESN is Tracy Castro-Gill, the former program manager of Seattle Public Schools’ Ethnic Studies who worked as the district's Ethnic Studies Manager from September 2018 until May 2020, when the superintendent removed her from the position due to "unprofessional behavior."

After being relieved of her duties at SPS Castro Gill, who identifies as a "non-binary" and "Xicanx," founded and serves as the executive director for the organization that sells radical curriculums and trains public school teachers across the country in "ethnic studies."

Castro-Gill was also an advisor to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s "Learning for Justice" initiative and an advisor on Washington State’s Ethnic Studies Framework. Castro Gill uses the pronouns they/them is also listed on the University of Washington's website as a "lecturer" on the list of faculty and is described as an "award-winning former middle school educator."

The Daily Wire’s Luke Rosiak exposed that the Castro Gill moved her child in with a child molester and “pressured her child, who had serious mental impairments, to become gender-nonbinary.”

"Castro-Gill, it turned out, was a perennially unhappy toxic liar, one who misrepresented her background to the point that her own father compared her to Rachel Dolezal, and who was ultimately pushed out of her job for repeated misconduct. A focus on racial oppression did not create resiliency, but rather despondency, with Castro-Gill and three other racial justice leaders going on paid leave from SPS for mental health issues in 2019 alone," Rosiak wrote.

Rosiak noted that "The academic achievement of Seattle’s youth plummeted as she implemented initiatives like replacing math instruction with courses on ‘power and oppression.'"

Earlier this month, it was revealed that Castro Gill claimed that white, Jewish people benefit from systems of oppression that disenfranchise people of color.

Last summer, Castro Gill ran a 3-part series about Jewishness and Ethnic studies, during which she attempted to prove that Jews benefit from "white privilege." Topics included "The Jewish Question?" a phrase popularized by Adolf Hitler and evolved into the rationale for the genocide of the Jews during the Holocaust.

In the third part of the series, Castro-Gill said Ari Hoffman, West Coast editor of The Post Millennial and a host Talk Radio 570 KVI "is complicit with Whiteness, because he is refusing to acknowledge his white privilege."

Castro Gill accused Hoffman of being complicit "in Whiteness and trying to undermine learning opportunities for students of color" for exposing programs that used the WESN curriculum. Castro Gill also claimed that Hoffman, an orthodox Jew, who wears a yarmulka and whose family was murdered in the Holocaust, "benefits from white privilege" and that "the only way I might know he’s Jewish is his last name," even though Hoffman is a common last name and Ari is a traditional Jewish name meaning "lion."

In the blog post, Castro Gill also claimed that "Zionists," like Hoffman "want to silence folks of color to satisfy their own sense of safety at the expense of the safety of folks of color."

Castro Gill also held "Youth Activist Academy" at the Woodland Park Zoo and the University of Washington for the second summer in a row.

The Post Millennial requested a copy of the curriculum at the time and was denied.