Low-Performance School in Bay Area Uses ‘Woke Kindergarten’ Program

Glassbrook Elementary School is located in Hayward, California. It’s a low-performance school that has been on the state’s watch list for academic advancement since 2020. According to The Daily Wire, as of last spring, “Less than 4%” of the school’s 474 students “were proficient in math, and less than 12% of students were proficient in English.”

Other schools in the Bay Area have wrestled with proficiency scores as well, and some have made efforts to improve them. For instance, with the help of a math intervention program, John Muir Elementary School in San Fransisco brought the math proficiency rates from 15% to 50%. And so, some may presume Glassbrook would take notes and follow suit. However, such presumptuous thinking would be wrong.

Instead of investing in programs that specialize in math and English skills, Glassbrook used $250,000 worth of federal funding meant to help low-performing schools to sign a three-year contract with “Woke Kindergarten.” And to the surprise of perhaps no one, Glassbrooke’s proficiency scores have only worsened since implementing this program. It’s likely unsurprising because “Woke Kindergarten” has little to nothing to do with math or English.

According to the program’s website, “woke kindergarten is a global, abolitionist early childhood ecosystem & visionary creative portal supporting children, families, educators and organizations in their commitment to abolitionist early education and pro black and queer and trans liberation.” It was founded by Akiea “Ki” Gross who claims to use the pronouns, “they/them.”

Glassbrook implemented “Woke Kindergarten to train its teachers in topics like white supremacy and oppression.” As such, teachers would then use the same material they were trained with to indoctrinate children. For example, kindergarteners would be taught about the “language of the resistance” and the “woke word of the day.” Some of these terms include “ceasefire,” “strike,” “abolish,” “protest,” and “anti-racist.” Young children, are encouraged to ask “unconventional questions rooted in liberatory thought.” One question the program suggests five-year-olds ask is, “If we abolished the police, what else could we do to keep people in the world safe?”

Additionally, the program includes “60 sec texts” and “woke read alouds” that contain gender identity, Black Lives Matter, and climate “injustice” propaganda, as well as anti-capitalism and anti-Israel content.

If curiosity continues as to what this program is about, Gross shared her sentiments on TikTok, where she stated, “I believe Israel has no right to exist. I believe the United States has no right to exist. I believe every settler colony who has committed genocide against native peoples has no right to exist.”

A teacher at Glassbrook, Tiger Craven-Neeley, told the San Fransisco Chronicle that he was instructed to “disrupt whiteness” within the classroom. “What does that mean?” he asked. “I just want to know, what does that mean for a third-grade classroom?” However, his inquiry led to him getting “temporarily banned from the training sessions,” the New York Post wrote.

Meg Kilgannon, senior fellow for Education Studies at Family Research Council, told The Washington Stand, “The ‘system of oppression’ that is holding students back is created by radicals or incompetents who purchase programs like ‘Woke Kindergarten’ rather than reading or math specialists who can teach children skills.”

Joseph Backholm, senior fellow for Biblical Worldview and Strategic Engagement at FRC, also commented to TWS, “When people tell you who they are, believe them.” He explained how schools such as Glassbrook make it clear “what they hope the outcome will be with your children.” He added, “If we leave our children in their care, we can’t complain when they convert our children.”

As Backholm put it, “Discipleship requires more than simply protecting our kids from bad ideas in kindergarten, but it does not require less than that.” Kilgannon concluded, “The children trapped in this school and the poor parents who rely on the school are being robbed of their education. It’s disgusting.”