Let me preface this by saying I am a leftist, but that I have tried to keep my own politics out of this post. This one runs deep and is complex and I want it to speak for itself. However, as is true for all of us on Reddit, my biases Will appear sometimes inadvertently. I apologize in advance.

Welcome, class, to Woke Kindergarten. As the website says, “all power to the little people!” Speaking of the website, here is the description on the first page:

“Woke kindergarten is a global, abolitionist early childhood ecosystem & visionary creative portal supporting children, families, educators and organizations in their commitment to abolitionist early education and pro-black and queer and trans liberation.”

In other words, we're here to teach your kids about how to be woke! The website covers such topics as:

• Teaching kids about Palestinian Liberation and the current ongoing genocide in Palestine.

• Black power and rebellion.

• Woke Words-of-the-Day, such as: ceasefire; strike; abolish; protest; anti racist; and, for some reason the only one in Spanish, manifestation! Each comes with a cute little graphic explaining the meaning of these words!

We also include “Woke Wonderings”, such as: “if we eradicate borders, how might we restructure our community; if the military was abolished, how could we use that money instead; and weirdly, about “unschooling”, if schools were nonexistent, how might we learn?

All this and more at wokekindergarten.org. Yes this is real. Yes, I think it is as insane as Brave Books. This is a very wild rabbit hole that ends with $250,000 from the San Francisco treasure disappearing into a black hole with a further 15k in grants. How did we get there from here? It's a long road. Let's begin.

First and foremost, now that you sort-of know about what WK wants to do - i.e. make Kindergarten “woke” in the most insane way possible - we need to examine Ki, the founder of this bullshittery. Ki, whose name is Akiea Gross, is a political activist and author who wrote “Marty to the Moon”, a pretty innocuous kids book. From their LinkedIn, we can get a better sense of them:

“Akiea “Ki” Gross (they/them) is an abolitionist early educator, coach, consultant and creative entrepreneur currently innovating ways to unlearn, heal, liberate and create with their pedagogy, Woke Kindergarten. In the many years they spent teaching in classrooms, their experiences spanned infancy to 6th grade. Prior to leaving the school system, they served as a Kindergarten Teacher and an Instructional Coach of Inquiry-Based Learning in Harlem.

They hold an M.A. in Developmental Psychology from Teachers College, an M.S. in Childhood Education/Special Education from the Progressive Education Institute/Touro College and two B.A.’s in Child Development and Family Studies and Psychology, respectively.”

Also on their profile we see they founded:

BlackTeachersMatter and Black Teachers Mentor

Equitable Schools

Womyxn Amplify - a collaboration to sponsor BIPOC hip-hop artists

Let's take a look at Equitable Schools for this, which was the precursor to the infamous Woke Kindergarten, and was established in 2016, falling defunct in 2020. Looking it up sends us to a Facebook page, now defunct, titled Equitable Schools. Here we find this was listed as a non-profit, much in the same vein as WK. In fact the mission statement is much the same.

Equitable Schools, Inc (I don't think it was actually incorporated but whatever) was headquartered in a New York apartment building. So I don't think this ever took off really. But here we see the buddings of an anti white-establishment pro-black power educational program for very young minors, which, I mean, is weird right? Like I get wanting to root out supremacist movements at, well, the roots. But this? This is weird.

From here, Ki would go on to create their magnum opus, Woke Kindergarten. What's really weird is that WK is a for-profit org located in Maryland. Despite its for-profit status, the organization states that it “relies primarily on donations” and asks that fans support it either directly or through Patreon, a crowdfunding platform.

From InfluenceWatch we can see the programs that were, in part, offshoots from ES, Inc:

“Woke Kindergarten advertises six workshops to clients: “abolitionist teaching in the early years,” which claims to demonstrate how “the prison industrial complex manifests in early childhood”; “Protecting Joy: The Art of Critical Conversations,” which shows participants how to use the firm’s toolkits and resources to engage in “critical conversations”; “It’s Lit! Early Literacy Through the Woke Kindergarten Lens,” which specializes in showing participants how to make use of “60 Second Text” materials (and which is bundled as a product with the “60 Second Text Lesson Plan”); “Woke Read Alouds: Making Life Affirming Connections to Our World,” which claims to demonstrate how reading aloud constitutes “an act of resistance” conducive to “experiential exploration”; “Reading with ya Babies: Literacy in the Early Years,” which aims to help parents and caregivers interested in fostering an appreciation for reading in children; and “Youth Workshop: Wondering Towards an Abolitionist Future,” which is offered directly to children.”

"According to a report published in City Journal by Chris Rufo titled “Sexual Liberation in Public Schools,” on July 20, 2022 the Human Relations, Diversity, and Equity department of Los Angeles Unified was using teaching materials from Woke Kindergarten, particularly videos encouraging five-year-olds to experiment with gender pronouns such as “they,” “ze,” and “tree” and adopt “non-binary” gender identities on the basis of whatever felt “good.” A report from the Federalist concluded that the school district, for the aforementioned videos, as well as consulting and workshop services, paid the firm a total of $57,000.”

Mind you: Chris Rufo and the Federalist are right-wing as fuck and do have biases. However, what is said here is, AFAIK, true. Yes, the pronoun “Tree/Treeself”. You read that correctly. I'm transgender myself and find this insane.

This time Ki headquartered their business in a townhouse. In fact that is a common thread for all of their ideas: they are headquartered out of Ki's house.

They wrote an op ed titled WHITE TEACHERS NEED TO CHECK THEIR RACISM BEFORE TEACHING IT that I used the wayback machine to find. In it, they speak some truth about white privilege in co-racial education groups. It's not a bad article. I am including this because I want to highlight that behind the BS, there is someone who actually believes in something here. We have to remember that Ki isn't a scammer per se.

So when it comes to WK, I authentically believe that Ki believes in what they are saying, as insane as the project is.

Ok, back to WK. The company's resolution and filings are hard to find. I searched the records at Maryland.gov only to find out WK is not in good standing with the government, which means WK is not in compliance with Maryland laws for not having filed their documents for 2024. This lines up, as Ki has been unreachable for some time now.

I even emailed them and got back a response telling me they were on vacation and needed time to recover and would get back to me ASAP. This was some months ago. Put a pin in this.

Maryland says that Woke Kindergarten is an LLC, meaning the company's members cannot be held liable for company debts while all profits are reported as personal gains on taxes.

In 2021, the Hayward Unified School District signed a $250,000 three-year contract with WK, and that money sunk deep into a tar pit. School scores got worse even as attendance improved. It was a resounding failure.

In other words, Ki got a quarter of a million dollars for bullshit and got off the hook for it.

Here is the statement by the Hayward Unified School District on their contract with Woke Kindergarten: https://www.husd.us/post-details/~board/all-news/post/superintendent-remarks-regarding-woke-kindergarten

Highlights:

“To help drive improvement, Glassbrook decided to focus on justice, healing-centered and academically aligned thematic units, and support for the academic and social and emotional needs of their students. Our students and families had an extremely difficult time during COVID, and we understand the school’s desire to make sure that students felt comfortable returning to our classes and that our teachers found ways to reconnect with families. To support these efforts, Glassbrook began a partnership with Woke Kindergarten using CSI funds. After an initial contract, the team extended the contract to three years.”

“Recently, we became aware of statements by the Woke Kindergarten founder both on the Woke Kindergarten website and on social media platforms. Although we respect freedom of speech and the right for individuals to hold a variety of political views, the social media and other public statements of the vendor do not align with the values of the district and those of many of our community members. “

“We concluded that now was an appropriate time to terminate the contract.”

This shit made it to the Senate (this link will download a PDF): https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.help.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2024-02-22_bc_to_cde_woke_kindergarten.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiQ4-Wp642HAxU0HEQIHbrpBMYQFnoECC0QAQ&usg=AOvVaw39vsxVl006SV8qYaFl5hn5

So where is Ki now? Well, no one knows. They are unreachable, all of their socials are dead or locked down, and they've been radio silent. I bet they're sweating bullets for the eventual audit. But that's just my theory.

To summarize, they got $250,000 from a school District, $57,000 in contracts, $15,000 in grants, and oh, they have a kickstarter for Woke Kindergarten that got $25,000 in donations. Altogether they got ~$350,000 dollars for this horse shit, and then they vanished. What the fuck lol.

Thanks for reading!