Albuquerque schools questioned over anti-racism training spending

The conservative legal group America First Legal said accounting records it obtained show Albuquerque Public Schools spent nearly $700,000 on anti-racism training for teachers and administrators, including money from federal pandemic relief intended to help students recover lost learning. The district approved $336,500 in American Rescue Plan funds in 2021 for training tied to the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond. Asked by Fox News Digital, district officials said they could not confirm the spending or how much of it came from federal Covid relief because they did not have immediate access to the records. The programme at Albuquerque included an introductory course called "Community Conversations" on equity and anti-racism principles, an "Introduction to Undoing Racism" and a multi-day "Undoing Racism" workshop, delivered through the Anti-Racism Training Institute of the Southwest, which had a 23-year relationship with the institute. The People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond has received grants from George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, and its training materials, as quoted by Fox, instruct "White folks" to "learn how [they] became white" and define race as a "specious classification of human beings created by Europeans (whites)" used to assign worth and social status and maintain "power and privilege". The account of the spending and the characterisation of the materials both come from America First Legal and Fox News Digital; the district has not confirmed either.