The “ethics and character” coordinator at an elite private school in Ohio sent an email to faculty and staff venting about a coalition of anti-critical race theory parents, according to communications obtained by the Daily Caller.
Parents were alerted March 14 about an email from May 2021 in which Columbus Academy’s Tim Leet berated parents for opposing the school’s embrace of critical race theory-inspired curriculum. The email specifically called out a coalition of anti-critical race theory parents called “Pro CA Coalition” — referred to in the email as “the Coalition” — and the Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism (FAIR).
“It’s been hard watching the Coalition dance with impunity on our front lawn while we stay inside and tend to their children,” the email read. “They claim to support teachers, but at the same time they make a mockery of our profession with their distortions and cynical innuendo.”
“They attack our school and its leaders with clods of rumor and misinformation lashed together with reasoning we wouldn’t accept from their kids,” the email continued. “The whole thing would be laughable if it weren’t so dangerous.”
Approximately six weeks after Leet’s email, Pro CA Coalition founders Andrea Gross and Amy Gonzalez’s children were unenrolled from the school. The school claims the duo engaging in an “inflammatory” and “misleading” campaign against the school.
Leet’s email states that his intention was not “to take public swings at the Coalition,” but to call on teachers to double down on the school’s “cultural competency” approach. Part of the school’s approach includes exploring the tenets of critical race theory, according to the school’s curriculum overview.
According to the document, students in the Upper School “may be exposed to some of the underlying concepts embedded in ‘critical race theory,’ including concepts of systemic racism, as part of learning about different perspectives on various issues.”
Columbus Academy upholds that students learn about critical race theory, though they are not “taught” the theory any more than they are taught about “fascism or socialism when studying European history.” (RELATED: Parents Chant ‘Racist’ While Asian Mother Shares Anti-CRT Book During School Board Meeting)
Leet’s email continued by berating the Coalition and FAIR for calling on educators to treat kids the same, regardless of their race. Leet argued that disregarding race would be akin to disregarding a student’s “health, trauma, or learning differences.”
“The suggestion that we should recognize and accommodate the wide range of life experiences that follow predictably along lines of race, social class, and religion is seen somehow as prejudicial and unfair,” Leet wrote. “Call it attending to the whole child or meeting the terms of that sacred trust, but we are not more free to disregard race and other dimensions of identity in the name of fairness than we would be to disregard health, trauma, or learning differences.”
Screenshot/Tim Leet/Columbus Academy
The email insinuated that families and organizations who push back against the ideology of anti-racism are racist, as they are benefiting from a system of “privilege.”
“For families whose cultural assumptions mirrored the cultural assumptions of the classrooms, the challenging of those assumptions is a destabilizing experience. It’s not hard to imagine that they experience this challenge as a loss and, perhaps, as a threat,” the email read. “However, what is being threatened is nothing more than the privilege of moving with ease within a rigged system.”
Gross and Gonzalez told the Daily Caller that they find Leet’s definition of “fairness” to be “concerning.”
“It appears his standard is defined as it is not fair to treat everyone equally,” the duo said.
The duo began pushing back against the school in 2021 after the high school’s Dean of Students hosted a “civil disobedience” walkout for students. Students were also asked to leave their classrooms and participate in a “Black Empowerment” tribute in the school’s gymnasium.
Columbus Academy did not respond to the Daily Caller’s request for comment.
