The Ministry of Justice (DOJ) awarded more than $100 million in grants during the Biden administration to promote restorative justice and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), according to a conservative watchdog.
Parents who defend education (PDE) released the report on Thursday, which revealed that millions of dollars in federal funding were spent between 2021 and 2024 in 36 states and 946 K-12 school districts, helping more than three million students advance restorative justice practices, social emotional learning and DEI in the classroom with many projects focused on improving school climate for specific demographics, such as LGBTQ+ and BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color).
The DOJs STOP school violence program provides grants to nonprofit organizations, school districts, and city and state governments in an effort to “increase school safety by implementing solutions that will improve school climate.” But PDE argues that the DOJ actually aims to replace exclusionary discipline with restorative practices and social emotional learning (SEL).
Social-emotional learning is advertised as a way to teach students social skills to support their mental health and emotional well-being, but it has been criticized as a way to address controversial topics such as Critical race theory and gender theory. As a result, it has become a point of contention among parents, teachers and politicians who argue in favor of a strong academic emphasis at school and against classroom discussions that they believe should be left to the discretion of parents at home.
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The Department of Justice has spent more than $100 million on “restorative justice,” DEI measures for students. (iStock)
PDE describes exclusionary discipline as a process that removes the disruptor from the classroom, allowing the rest of the class to continue learning. Restorative practices, on the other hand, often disrupt class time for more students because both the perpetrator(s) and victim(s) in a conflict are brought together to discuss what happened and to “repair the damage,” PDE states.
The report divides grants into four categories: general, DEI, consulting/certification and hiring. For example, consultants hired by the DOJ aimed to “educate students or staff about (a) the changing school climate” and promote concepts such as critical race theory, critical gender theory and queer theory, according to PDE’s analysis. More than $10 million was allocated to hiring new administrators DEI roles such as ‘facilitators of restorative justice’.
This includes external organizations engaged to train students and staff on the proposed topic CASELthe International Institute for Restorative Practice, Second stepAnd Courageous conversations about race.
Second graders hold their heads as they talk about “thoughts” and how they relate to “feelings” and resulting “actions” at Paw Paw Elementary School. (AP Photo/Martha Irvine)
“Words matter, and this report highlights how the Biden administration chose to deliberately hijack a school safety program to fund their pet programs,” Nicole Neily, president and founder of PDE, told me. Fox News digital in a statement.
“It is difficult to imagine that ‘school climate’ would ever be improved by creating racially segregated programs or hiring teachers based on skin color. If anything, these programs only lead to more hostility and tension between students.”
Well-known examples of grants awarded include: $2 million from the DOJ to “create safe learning environments that embed practices of anti-racism and anti-oppression” at the Minnesota Department of Education, $1,853,070 awarded to Bowling Green State University to develop a mental health curriculum for students in rural and high-poverty districts, with activities such as “mindfulness meditation, yoga and knitting circles,” $1,785,773 for Penn State University reduce cyberbullying in Central Pennsylvania K-12 schools, providing an opportunity “to meaningfully advance equity in violence prevention for communities that have been historically underserved, marginalized, adversely affected by inequality, and disproportionately affected by crime, violence, and victimization (People of Color (POC), women, people with disabilities and the LGBTQIA+ community).
Neily told Fox News Digital in her statement that the grant program is intended to “recognize, quickly respond to and prevent acts of violence.” This, she said, is why it’s “so annoying that projects like knitting circles got the green light.”
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Ministry of Justice (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Other examples include a cooperation program between Temple University and the School District of Philadelphia, allocating $1,688,668 in an effort to prevent violence by educating at-risk youth about “community policing, trauma-informed conflict emphasizing racial/historical and intergenerational trauma, the impact of social media on conflict and conflict escalation and management, anti-bias education, restorative practices.”
A million dollars was granted to reach West End in Upland, California to fund a project to improve school safety in the Jurupa Valley Unified School District with content “on LGBTQIA+ issues aligned with SB 857, mental/behavioral health, substance use prevention, and /or conflict mediation.” Another one $1,000,000 was given to Ocean County, New Jersey to “reduce the acceptability of bullying, oppression and all forms of violence.”
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That was almost $1 million awarded to The Milwaukee Public School Board of Directors aims to “advance racial equity” through activities such as “racial equity seminars” and student-led focus groups “to dismantle institutionalized barriers and promote an inclusive school climate,” according to the DOJ announcement of the subsidy.
Fox News Digital has contacted the DOJ for comment.
