AIM Investigates: What you need to know about what was uncovered in Ohio
February 28, 2023
Update: Triumph in Ohio! Accuracy in Media’s investigation led to the passage of universal school choice in the Buckeye State. Read more about that here, and watch the video below to see the tremendous impact of our investigation.
Accuracy in Media released several videos revealing the covert ways that educators across the state of Ohio were preparing to skirt a possible law against Critical Race Theory.
Afterward, some of the exposed school districts attempted to dismiss the evidence as lacking context.
So AIM called their bluff. AIM has released longform footage of investigators’ hidden camera conversation with Matthew L. Boaz, the executive director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Upper Arlington Schools outside of Columbus, Ohio.
This additional footage comes from the first part of AIM’s Ohio investigation, in which some employees at Columbus-area schools revealed some of their deceptive tactics for sneaking in CRT indoctrination.
“You can pass a bill that you can’t teach Critical Race Theory in a classroom, but if you didn’t cover programming or you didn’t cover extracurricular activities or anything like that, that message might still get out,” Boaz told AIM investigators.
Columbus isn’t the only part of Ohio where schools are willing to deceive parents to force-feed Critical Race Theory to students. Accuracy in Media’s investigators found similarly deceptive school officials in the Cincinnati area as well, and they got it all on camera.
“We’ll just call it something else,” Assistant Principal of Mason Early Childhood Center Vivian Alvarez was captured telling AIM’s investigators on a hidden camera. The school is “still going to do the same work,” she added.
In northern Ohio, investigators found more of the same.
“Even if they pass some of these stupid laws, there’s ways around it,” Keith Ahearn, superintendent of Fairview Park City School District in Cleveland, told AIM investigators.
Ohio House Bill 616 was introduced in 2022. If passed, the measure would have barred the “teaching or providing training that promotes or endorses divisive or inherently racist concepts.”
Headlines smeared the bill, calling it a “Don’t Say Gay” bill, the same nickname given to Florida’s Parental Rights in Education Act.
The bill did not advance out of Ohio’s House.
Of course, the threat of this bill didn’t scare Ohio school administrators. They admit to having ways around these pesky laws.
Dayton, Ohio educators are similarly prepared to skirt anti-CRT laws if they are enacted in the state.
“There’s all sorts of ways around it,” Kettering City School District Student Services Supervisor Rick Earley told AIM’s investigators on hidden camera.
Betsy Gann, director of Curriculum and Gifted Services at Bellbrook-Sugarcreek Schools, echoed this, saying that “There’s language that we need to be careful of. There are triggering kinds of words and that’s how I put it.”
When AIM investigators asked if they could teach the same content under a different label, she said, “Yeah.”