Attorney General Merrick Garland has been exposed for having ties to a company that promotes the type of content parents are opposing in their ongoing battle with local school boards – the very parents that Garland is using the DOJ to attack.
“Merrick Garland has declared a war on parents,” Asra Nomani of Parents Defending Education (PDE) tweeted Tuesday. “His daughter is married to the cofounder of @PanoramaEd which is under fire for its multimillion contracts with school boards. At @DefendingEd, parents sent us tips. We raised the alarm. Now Garland is trying to silence parents.”
Nomani referenced the fact that Garland’s daughter Rebecca is married to Panorama co-founder Xan Tanner. Panorama’s ties to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg have also inspired skepticism as his company has come under fire for the way it uses data and impacts users’ psychological health.
Garland announced Monday that he would coordinate investigation of purported threats and acts of violence against school boards across the U.S. That came after a controversial letter in which the National School Boards Association (NSBA) suggested to the Biden administration that parents were engaging in domestic terrorism.
The crackdown on the concerned parents now becomes more obviously an attempt by Garland to silence the opposition in a fight which could hurt his family’s bottom line.
For months, parents have been fighting what they describe as “woke” indoctrination in schools and purported attempts to fuel that at the administrative level.
Nomani’s group worries that Panorama Education – the consultancy founded by Tanner – is using data collection as a pretext for school officials to push controversial ideas about race, identity, and sexuality.
PDE previously flagged a $1.8 million contract for Panorama to conduct social and emotional learning (SEL) monitoring in Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS), resulting in data on students. Earlier in September, that number was bumped up to more than $2 million as part of a contract addition with Panorama.
Panorama’s contract was part of a broader, $78.8 million investment of coronavirus relief that FCPS directed towards a “welcoming” and “culturally responsive” environment for students.
Its website explains that the funding is intended to “support equity professional development for school teams, and social-emotional staff to work directly with departments and school-based teams.”
A more detailed breakdown of FCPS’ plan showed the majority ($46.2 million) designated for “Intervention Special Education Teacher Contracts.” But it also showed $2.2 million going toward “Equity PD for School Teams” and $140,115 toward “Equity PD for Equity Leads” — both apparently referring to professional development for staff and faculty.
“Equity” programs have come under fire for resemblances to critical race theory and its associated ideas.
On its website, Panorama promotes “powerful words” describing equity as integral to SEL. “If you are talking about social-emotional learning but not equity, you are not talking about SEL,” reads the quote from Dr. Lorenzo Moore, who spoke during Panorama’s September 2020 virtual meet-up.
Throughout his short tenure, AG Garland has proven himself to be rather radical and heavily biased, so it should come as no surprise that he is willing to do whatever it takes to accomplish his goals – even if it means labeling innocent parents as domestic terrorists.
Author: Larry Brimstone
