Weeks after Alpha News broke the story that Mankato Area Public Schools will offer extra pay to non-white teachers only, school leaders have decided to weigh in.
Their response: people should only listen to the mainstream media.
“Alternative media, regardless of their political affiliation, is not real news. The school district does not lend credence by responding,” Superintendent Paul Peterson and the district’s director of communications, Stacy Wells, said in an article for a local outlet.
“These headlines and the assertions are absurd and do not merit a response,” they added, in reference to reporting on the district’s race-based pay scheme.
Late last year, the board voted to amend district policy so that non-white teachers only may receive “additional stipends” to become mentors to other non-white colleagues. The new policy will also have the district “placing American Indian educators at sites with other American Indian educators and educators of color at sites with other educators of color.”
These policies are allowed — but not required — under a new state law.
These new measures are designed to “increase opportunity for collegial support” for BIPOC teachers, boosting the district’s retention rate among these demographics.
Because the majority of the outlets reporting on this policy exist in what administrators call “the alternative media universe,” they feel they don’t need to explain themselves further.
Some of the figures in the “universe” described by the district apparently include the Washington Examiner, and Utah’s Rep. Burgess Owens, who discussed the policy on Newsmax TV:
