Wisconsin Schools Prioritize Climate Justice Over Academic Achievement
Students are taught that cows are harmful to the environment.
The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction devotes an entire website to climate justice resources, indoctrinating kids under the banner of "environmental literacy"—while actual literacy scores in reading and math continue to decline. Maybe it's time to trade climate lessons for phonics lessons.
Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) has a plan for your child's education—and it's not about reading, writing, or arithmetic. It's about climate justice. MPS adopted a 31-page Sustainability Action Plan claiming, "schools play a vital role in addressing environmental challenges." A land acknowledgment and environmental literacy appear prominently in the plan.
Strategies on improving reading and math scores are nowhere to be found.
The MPS plan does advocate one positive—turning playgrounds from barren asphalt into "living playfields complete with trees . . . and grassy play areas." One wonders why they built playgrounds on asphalt in the first place.
MPS' sustainability plan requires instructors to complete a "Climate Health Equity" course which includes training on climate justice and global climate change. Digging into this training reveals a broader push to spread climate justice ideology across the entire state.
The district's strategic goals call for impacting "perception of sustainable practices and values across the district among MPS employees." In other words, brainwash everyone to worship the climate change agenda. Not only do they want to control the minds of their employees, but also those of students across Wisconsin.
Brainwashing Children
The Wisconsin Climate Education Hub is a resource provided to school districts throughout the state with support from MPS and the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction. The hub provides dozens of lessons from a radical bent instructing teachers to help students "begin the work of examining and dismantling common misconceptions about climate change within the brave space of the classroom."
Some of the material is based on narratives from the think tank Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) that's funded by radical leftist donors such as the Rockefeller Foundation, Ford Foundation, and George Soros-linked Arabella Advisors.
One lesson in the hub praises the failed Paris Accords, the Obama agreement that punished America for pollution, but not China—the world's largest emitter of carbon. President Obama wasted taxpayer dollars on this initiative, including sending $1 billion to a Green Climate Fund associated with the Paris Agreement—without authorization of Congress. The Heritage Foundation outlined how disastrous the agreement would have been to the United States, and fortunately President Trump pulled the plug on American involvement.
The one-sided MPS curriculum doesn't mention these facts.
Another lesson in the hub claims climate change worsens the mental health crisis because medications "may not work effectively when stored at higher temperatures." Other fear-mongering curriculum tells students to eat less meat and more vegetables to combat cow-related methane emissions, pushing the claim that beef harms the environment..
The climate hub also promotes a school board member climate action toolkit that provides "advice for implementing climate change solutions at the district level." One of the resources in this toolkit is an outside group called the Green Schools National Network (GSNN). GSNN profits off contracts with school divisions across the nation to implement far-left climate justice initiatives. They promote related resources from the controversial smear group Southern Poverty Law Center so teachers can "explore topics like race and ethnicity, gender equality, and sexual orientation with students."
The state of Wisconsin only teaches a one-sided, pro-Obama, climate extremist narrative and local districts follow suit.
Public Records Shenanigans
MPS school board meeting minutes indicate that MPS hired GSNN in January 2025. The MPS sustainability plan was "developed in coordination with Green Schools National Network (GSNN)."
To find out how much taxpayers spent on hiring GSNN, Restoration News submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to MPS asking for copies of contracts and payments to GSNN. MPS replied that "no such records were located." That response raises suspicions since GSNN charged an Oregon school district $30,000 for similar work.
What is MPS hiding?
Promoting a one-sided view on climate issues politicizes taxpayer-funded schools. A balanced approach would present both sides of the debate, including curriculum from a group like the CO2 Learning Center that debunks many of the climate narratives. For example, the CO2 Learning Center points out that "modest warming means longer growing seasons" and "more CO2 means more plant growth." Wisconsin schools suppress facts like these that counter the extremist climate narrative.
Wisconsin taxpayers deserve to know why their children are being steeped in one-sided climate activism while basic reading and math skills continue to slide. How much has MPS actually paid GSNN, and why can't the district produce the records requested? Wisconsin schools should get back to the basics—teaching kids to read and do math—instead of funding activist curriculum dressed up as "sustainability."
MORE COVERAGE FROM RESTORATION NEWS
Discrimination Watch: HUD Warns Colleges: End Racially Segregated Dorms or Face Consequences
Infiltration Watch: Educational Warfare: K-12 Schools Infiltrated by Marxist Extremists and Foreign Influence
Preparation for Life Watch: Recent Grads Are Underprepared for the Workplace. Here’s How to Reverse the Crisis.
We need your help to save America—chip in today.
Restoration News, a project of Restoration of America, is your trusted investigative news source for the America First movement. As a rapidly growing conservative news site, we focus on delivering accurate and insightful exposés on political news, immigration news, leftist lies, and other pressing issues affecting everyday Americans. Our uncompromising commitment to a hard-hitting, fact-based, America First, and faithful perspective ensures that you receive news that aligns with your values.
Every dollar gets us closer to winning the war on woke.
