Minnesota State Wire

Pequot Lakes parent Mariah Hines insists recent changes in school curriculum planning are tilting too far to the left. 

Hines points to media teacher Sheri Levasseur as being behind the district's tilt that includes promoting the 1619 curriculum.

“Levasseur was one of the teachers that was sent four years ago to go take the ... training,” Hines said. ”The 1619 project; it's basically a critical race theory and it wants to reimagine history through a different lens.”

Hines said Levasseur’s mission is clear and essentially goes against everything she thinks the board should stand for.

“She's promoting the 1619 project,” she said. “That's not part of our curriculum. That was back in January. Now, I understand that she was one of the teachers that took this SEED program. I spoke with a kindergarten teacher who also took the SEED program, and she told me that she did learn about white privilege through the SEED program.”

All across the country, the SEED program has been controversial. A recent paper concluded that after being taught about white privilege, students were less empathetic to whites, with poor whites being shown to have suffered the most damage.