A sixth-grade math teacher in Kansas resigned from his position, citing his disapproval of the district’s Critical Race Theory-inspired training and renewed mask mandates.
Teacher Josiah Enyart announced his resignation just days after Shawnee Mission School District (SMSD) sent an email renewing mask mandates for the upcoming 2021-2022 school year. SMSD said that it will require all kids and unvaccinated teachers to wear masks.
“This was my final straw,” Enyart told The Sentinel, a local news outlet.
Upon his resignation, the school district informed Enyart that he would need to pay a “liquidation penalty” for resigning past a specific deadline in his teaching contract. The school requested that Enyart return his teaching equipment and bring a $1,000 check.
According to emails reviewed by The Daily Wire, Enyart attempted to appeal the fine with the district’s Board of Education, but was “denied.” In response, a colleague set up a GoFundMe to help the teacher raise $1,000 to pay off the liquidation fine.
Enyart was a teacher in the school for 13 years and received the Comanche Elementary School teacher Jedel Excellence in Mathematics Education Award in 2020. He told The Sentinel that he grew tired of the district after it implemented a critical race theory-inspired training called Deep Equity.
“It’s all critical race theory stuff. That was kind of the start where I realized, they’re really trying to bring this in and make it something,” Enyart said.
According to The Daily Wire, Deep Equity training was founded by Gary Howard, who believes that white people “are collectively bound and unavoidably complicit in the arrangements of dominance that have systematically favored our racial group over others.” Howard is a white man.
SMSD, which employs 4,300 educators and has over 27,000 students, is training its teachers in Deep Equity. The district reportedly spent more than $400,000 on the training.
Deep Equity is not just controversial among teachers, but also parents and taxpayers. The training tells educators to “explicitly reject and resist any parents who disagree with it.”
Related: Progressive ‘Equity’ Group Trains Kansas Teachers To The Tune Of $400,000
Enyart noted that he is pulling his children from SMSD as well.
“I’m not going to continue to have my kids bossed around by these people and have no power as a parent, no power as a teacher, and for my kids to have no say,” the former teacher said.
Similarly, a Christian elementary school teacher in Virginia made headlines for tearfully resigning from one of the nation’s most prominent school districts. Teacher Laura Morris claimed that the Loudoun County Public School district board was pushing Critical Race Theory on “our most vulnerable constituents: the children.”
“Not only that, but within the last year I was told in one of my so-called ‘equity trainings’ about white, Christian, able-bodied females currently have the power in our schools and that ‘this has to change,’” Morris said. “Clearly you’ve made your point: You no longer value me or many other teachers you’ve employed in this county … School board: I quit.”