NH School Officials Are Trying to Hide DEI Material from The Public Eye

The Manchester, New Hampshire school district is working to conceal its Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) related materials from the public eye after the district drew complaints from parents for giving students a handout on the “Wheel of Power and Privilege.”

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Last week, the Manchester School District sparked outrage when eighth-grade students of the Henry J. McLaughlin Middle School returned home with a packet titled “Cultural Fluency 2.0: Microaggressions,” from their Language Arts class unit on the Holocaust.

Despite being nominally focused on the systematic murder of Jews and other groups by Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 40s, the packet included no information about the actual Holocaust, the local newspaper of record stated.

According to the Union Leader, which first reported on the packet, it contained examples of “microaggressions” including referring to illegal immigrants as “illegals” and failing to use their fellow students’ preferred transgender pronouns.

The packet also included a “wheel of privilege,” asking students to circle the traits listed on the wheel that most defined them. The wheel included rankings for each trait, from “most marginalized” to “most powerful.” White heterosexual men were ranked at the top of the power hierarchy.

The school district responded to outraged parents, claiming that the “Wheel of Power and Privilege” was unintentionally given to one group of students, but that it was really intended for professional development.

“In this isolated incident, students were asked to complete an anonymous self-reflection form to explore their understanding of self to text within the unit. Unfortunately, materials intended only for staff professional development were used for this anonymous student self-reflection,” said a statement from the Manchester School District.

Manchester Mayor Jay Ruais (R) even weighed in on the controversy, criticizing the DEI-based materials that told middle school students they were either inherently powerful or marginalized and oppressed based on immutable traits like race and sex.

“This is unacceptable and not what should be taking place in our schools,” Ruais said, “I’ve made it clear it is my expectation that this will not happen again.”

NH State Sen. Victoria Sullivan (R-Manchester) suggested that distributing the survey could have been illegal under state and federal laws requiring parental consent prior to the distribution of a survey collecting non-academic information.

Days after the DEI-based training materials were released, the school district’s executive director of Student Engagement, Outcomes, and Success, Amadou Hamady, sent out an email to staff addressing the situation.

In it, he urged school employees to conceal training materials related to their “cultural fluency training” from the public and to refrain from sharing them with students or members of the public.

“Unfortunately, it appears the slides were then shared beyond the students’ use, possibly reaching individuals outside the school community and even the local press,” he said.

“Given the current political climate and heightened scrutiny around Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) work, we are again reminding all staff to refrain from sharing any training materials, especially presentation slides, surveys, facilitator guides, or discussion content with students or external parties,” he added.

Hamady’s email will likely only draw further scrutiny from parents outraged that their children’s school district is actively working to conceal information from the public.

The DEI-based training may even draw federal attention, as the federal government works to crack down on states like Maine that refuse to comply with President Donald Trump’s executive orders mandating an end to DEI education in public schools and a ban on transgender-identifying males in girls’ sports.