CV NEWS FEED // A public school district in California reportedly paid dozens of high school students $1,400 each to participate in training programs conducted by a far-left activist group.
Francesca Block of The Free Press reported Thursday that “from December 2019 until now, the Long Beach Unified School District [LBUSD] south of Los Angeles has paid at least 78 students a total of nearly $100,000 for participating in a club run by” Californians for Justice (CFJ).
Block added that “[t]he most recent contract” between the school district and the group “runs until June 2024.”
Such contracts “show the school district used taxpayer funds to pay the group nearly $2 million to facilitate equity and leadership development training for students and teachers,” she indicated.
Block specified that “[i]n addition to the student stipends, the contracts also allocated a total of $20,200 to 13 parents for participating in the group’s programs.”
She continued:
A spokesperson for [LBUSD] said the district refers to these stipends as “internships,” which ensure “equitable participation in CFJ programs, embracing diverse perspectives in education.”
But four teachers interviewed by The Free Press see the payments to students and their families as a “horrible propaganda strategy.” One told me, “I am shocked and horrified at such a fact.”
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Block noted that on its website, CFJ touts that it “has trained hundreds of youth of color in Long Beach to be community leaders and organizers.”
Another page on CFJ’s website purports that each year, the organization “[e]ngage[s] 250 youth in leadership development and advocacy, with a focus on low income youth, youth of color, LGBTQ youth, foster youth, and immigrant youth.”
Block went on to reference a September 2023 Instagram post in which CFJ promoted its youth activism initiatives. The video in the post features a student who recounted his time participating in a CFJ program. “It’s so fun,” he said. “You get paid good. You can have a fun time, events, all of that.”
The current contract between LBUSD and CFJ states that the school district’s “commitment to equity by district leadership creates an opening for deep and genuine partnership to achieve authentic student voice in decision-making.”
The contract states that CFJ’s contract with the school district will advance “a district wide Equity Agenda” and “[s]et the foundation for long term solutions and culture change in LBUSD so that Black, Indigenous, students of color receive the supports and resources that they need inside and outside of the classroom to be successful.”
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Jay Goldfischer, a history teacher at one of LBUSD’s high schools, told Block that “in reality, CFJ is not helping students find their own voices.”
“It’s giving them a scripted voice that’s not their own,” the teacher said. “They’re teaching them parroting, which is the exact opposite of how you empower children.”
Again from Block:
Goldfischer, who is Jewish, said CFJ is not an inclusive group—pointing to its response to the Hamas invasion of Israel on October 7. In an October 23 Instagram post—just two weeks after terrorists invaded Israel—CFJ described the plight of the Palestinian people as “ethnic cleansing and apartheid orchestrated by white supremacist settler colonialism bent on the goal of wiping out the indigenous Palestinian population.”
Readers can find Block’s full piece here.
