Minnesota Parents Alliance is fostering unfounded culture war ideas in school board races

The conservative Minnesota Parents Alliance (MPA), a state organization similar to Moms for Liberty, has been fostering unfound conspiracies about schools and endorsing questionable candidates for school boards.

During an event hosted by the MPA on April 25, education consultant Jennifer McWilliams gave a presentation at the Inver Grove Heights Community Center to parents in the Hastings school district, an area less than ten miles south of St. Paul. McWilliams suggested that Social Emotional Learning (SEL) lessons, which have been used in schools for decades, are now being used to control children.

The U.S. Department of Education defines SEL as a process for children to apply skills, understand emotions and set goals. However, McWilliams travels across the country informing parents and school boards that SEL is violating rights and advising them how to “fight the radicalization plaguing K-12.” According to her website, McWilliams is a former teacher who was fired in 2020 for “exposing the Social Emotional Learning at her school.”

During her Inver Grove Heights presentation, McWilliams baselessly claimed that the various methods used for SEL, like surveys, assessments and questionnaires, are being used to create a social credit system for children.

“These data systems are known as P-W, so preschool through the workforce,” McWilliams said. “This is a lifelong scoring system that they are building on the children right now. Essentially, what they are doing is building social credit scores for the children just like what is in China.”

China announced its implementation of a social credit system in 2014 to establish a system to track the trustworthiness of businesses and individuals by collecting data. McWilliams says it is her “strong opinion” that schools are attempting to do the same thing in America when children seek mental health services at school. She also voiced concern that such a system would block children from purchasing firearms in the future.

“They’re eventually going to use these scores to control what rights and what your children can do when they become adults,” McWilliams continued. “So, if you have a child that goes to, when they become an adult, purchase a firearm, you know, practice their Second Amendment, they will be able to pull up these scores and say, ‘Well, the scores indicate that you had some trouble growing up. These scores indicate that you were maybe not a responsible decision maker, again through the equity lens, so we need to put a restriction on your Second Amendment.’”

EXCLUSIVE: Leaked audio captures right-wing activists in MN (falsely) claiming that schools are creating student emotional profiles to restrict their ability to buy guns as adults. They claim Bill Gates is behind the effort:

“Full disclosure: I don’t have documentation on it.” pic.twitter.com/MIN89vMMSt

— Heartland Signal (@HeartlandSignal) October 13, 2023

McWilliams works for several law firms and parental groups such as Courage is a Habit, an organization that has a tab on its website alleging that SEL is used to mine data from children for destructive purposes. Later in her presentation, McWilliams admitted that she has no evidence for the information that she was presenting, but rather that it was her own belief.

“So again, a disclosure, I don’t have documentation on that,” McWilliams said. “But that is one way I believe this is going to work. Especially when you consider that massive funders are not only the Gates Foundation but also the United Nations and World Economic Forum.”

McWilliams also criticized the role of school counselors and accused them of using psychological profiles to “target” and “isolate” children. She also warned that the presence of school counselors will eventually allow the school to refer children to get abortions.

“I would just tell you, if you’re school is starting to bring in more school counselors and social workers and psychologists into the school, they’re creating the foundation to start bringing in health services,” McWilliams said. “And they will be able to refer your child for services. Maybe they want to get birth control or get an abortion or maybe they want to get hormone blockers. That’s where this system is going, and they will be able to do it without parents knowing.”

McWilliams did not respond to a request for comment.

A parent and special education teacher from Minnesota attended the presentation and told Heartland Signal that the vast majority of ideas proposed by McWilliams are unheard of among educators. The source chose to remain anonymous for safety concerns and gave photos and audio of the presentation to Heartland Signal on the condition of anonymity.

“It was very strong, it was very conspiracy-like,” the teacher said about McWilliams’ language. “’SEL was doing all these bad things in school,’ which is really the opposite of everything I’ve seen. And I’ve worked in two of the largest districts in the state, and as an evaluation team member and autism specialists, I’ve been in many schools.”

The source also explained that they had never heard SEL criticized in the way McWilliams was referring and that SEL has been used to effectively help students since they began their teaching career in the 1990s.

“In my role as a special education teacher, I help teach kids identify emotions and learn how to regulate their emotions,” the teacher said. “As an educator, Social Emotional Learning is just extremely needed in our schools along with mental health in our schools. I feel like that is very needed right now, and the opposite was being shared.”

In addition to hosting McWilliams’ presentation, the Minnesota Parent Alliance endorses candidates across the state. Two candidates named Carrie Tate and Jessica Dressely were elected to the Hastings School Board in 2022, and they garnered national attention shortly after their appointments over allegations of wanting to ban books from a Scholastic book fair.

During Tate and Dressely’s election, the school board race escalated to the point where the transgender child of incumbent chair Kelsey Waits was outed to the public. Now, the MPA is endorsing four candidates for the upcoming Hastings School Board election in November.

“If the candidates endorsed by these groups are elected, will we even keep the good teachers that we have,” the source expressed. “Or will they leave and go elsewhere? There is such a need for teachers everywhere, why would they stay if they’re not being supported by our school board. It keeps me up at night.”

If these candidates gain a majority on the seven-seat school board, they will have the ability to pass policy and change procedures in the district.

When Heartland Signal and local media reported last month that a fervent Holocaust denier is running for a school board seat in Roseville, the MPA publicly dismissed him as “noise” in the election. They also chastised reporters for covering the story while saying no one connected to the MPA denies the Holocaust.

The MPA did not respond to a request for comment.