The Arizona Department of Education has announced an “Empower Hotline” that allows parents to register complaints about improper teaching material at schools, including sexual content, Marxist concepts like critical race theory, and gender ideologies.
Tom Horne, superintendent of public instruction for Arizona, launched the hotline for citizens to report “inappropriate public school lessons that detract from teaching academic standards,” his office said. This includes ideologies with a focus on “race or ethnicity, rather than individuals and merit, promoting gender ideology, social emotional learning, or inappropriate sexual content.”
Through the hotline, citizens can provide feedback, concerns, or complaints regarding teaching material at schools. The phone hotline will be staffed during normal business hours. Off-hours phone calls and emails will be accepted at any time and followed up.
“Some say critical race theory (CRT) is a graduate study, not taught in K–12 schools. The evidence is to the contrary. I have a list of 250 Arizona teachers who signed a shocking statement promoted by the national teachers’ union, that if critical race theory were banned, they would defy the law,” Horne said in a news release.
“They would not have signed if they were not already teaching it. They come from 25 school districts, including the largest ones. Teachers must teach academics, not use their power over a captive audience, to promote their personal ideology. That is unprofessional conduct.”
The project was inspired by the work of historian and activist Howard Zinn.
“From police violence, to the prison system, to the wealth gap, to maternal mortality rates, to housing, to education and beyond, the major institutions and systems of our country are deeply infected with anti-Blackness and its intersection with other forms of oppression,“ the pledge states. ”To not acknowledge this and help students understand the roots of U.S. racism is to deceive them—not educate them.”
The pledge has gained 8,667 signatures, with a target goal of 12,800 signatures.
In February, the Arizona Legislature passed Senate Bill 1305, which described a list of race-related topics to be banned in K–12 public schools, including that “an individual, by virtue of the individual’s race or ethnicity, is inherently racist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.”
Acting Against CRT
Republican states are making efforts to suppress Marxist CRT ideologies. In January, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a Republican, signed an executive order stating that ideologies like CRT “have no place in Arkansas classrooms.”The order instructs the state education secretary to review policies, materials, rules, and communications of the department to make sure they comply with Title IV and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
“No person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance,” according to Title VI.
“Our institutions will be graduating students with degrees that will actually be useful,” he said. “We will be eliminating all DEI and CRT bureaucracies in Florida. It will wither on the vine.”
