The California Post reports Merced City School District has signed a contract, which totals $270,000, with Fresno-based School Yard Rap. That cost covers a summer “Rap Camp” and an “African American Affinity Group,” with a cap of 100 students who only qualify if they are black.
School Yard Rap has pocketed $610,000 from Merced from three contacts in a little of a year’s time, the Post also reported.
Only about 13% of Merced students meet math-proficiency benchmarks in the city school district's elementary schools and middle schools, which total 19 in all, the Post reported.
Another state benchmark Merced students struggle with is English Language Arts, since only about one-third of students test at or above those state levels.
Paul Runko, of Defending Education, told AFN the Merced district has already spent close to $1 million dollars on consultants for DEI initiatives and student race-based programming.
Defend Ed. has two issues regarding the contract, Runk said, beginning with spending school funds on rap when it could pour those funds into remedial tools that improve reading and test scores. The second issue for the education watchdog is the blatant racial discrimination.
“Basically saying these programs are for students of a specific race and not for others,” Runko said.
AFN found data from education website Eddata.org that says Merced’s citywide school district includes about 12,000 students in preschool through 8th grade. The city schools serve mostly Hispanic and Latino students, who make up more than 8,000 of students, while black students number fewer than 700.
According to the Post story, the lyrics of one educational rap song taught to black students goes:
History books have a white male skew, but believe me I ain’t blaming you. That’s who wrote it on paper — it’s a cycle by nature.
Runko said the controversy at Merced is a lesson for parents who have children in every public school district.
"Parents really need to be aware of not only the programs that are going on in their schools," he cautioned, "but who their school district is contracting with, and how much money they're paying these consultants for what is probably illegal and highly discriminatory programming."
