RUTHFULLY YOURS

Now he’s part of an underground network of parents in NYC and around the country, many of whom are left-leaning, fighting what they believe is the undue focus on race by schools as part of the new “woke” culture.

Many are reluctant to identify themselves publicly for fear of being labeled racist. But more are coming forward after Andrew Gutmann, the father of a 12-year-old girl at Manhattan’s posh Brearley School, wrote a scathing screed to administrators about their “anti-racism” obsession and went public in The Post last week.

Goldman, a businessman, was shocked by the amount of negative and inappropriate “anti-racist” dogma he said was being aimed at his fourth-grader and her classmates. But when he reached out to the school with his concerns, administrators were “arrogant and dismissive,” he told The Post.

Then he sent the school a letter.

“First and foremost, neither I, nor my child, have ‘white privilege,’ nor do we need to apologize for it,” Goldman wrote last September. “Suggesting I do is insulting. Suggesting to my 9-year-old child she does is child abuse, not education.”

In response, the school suggested Goldman take his daughter out of the school, he said. So he did. The family moved to Florida where his daughter is enrolled in a public school that he vetted beforehand to make sure critical race theory (CRT) was not part of the curriculum.

Heschel administrators did not respond to messages from The Post.

CRT is a controversial prescription for addressing racial issues centered around the idea of “white privilege.” It originated in universities and has spread to K-12 schools — both public and private. Its high priest, many parents say, is anti-racist scholar Ibram X. Kendi, author of “How to be an Anti-Racist.”

Though the Trump administration banned the use of federal funds for CRT training sessions for US agency workers, the Biden White House last week proposed using taxpayer money to encourage schools to incorporate it in classrooms.

“My mother said everyone should speak out about this — but when I said I was going to, she said, ‘I didn’t mean you,’” Goldman said, half-joking. “But I understand her concerns and I have them, too. These private schools are very powerful and they speak to one another. They want you to toe the line and do as you’re told or else.”

Many parents, like Goldman, and Bion Bartning, whose kids were enrolled in the $54,000-a-year Riverdale Country School, only got wind of the situation after Minneapolis cop Derek Chauvin killed Floyd in police custody last May or when they overheard evidence of it during their kids’ Zoom classes.

Bartning was so upset by what he said was the divisiveness and harm done to children as a result of Riverdale’s new “orthodoxy” about race that he pulled his kids out of the school.

Last month he formed the Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism (FAIR) to combat CRT in schools and promote a “pro-human” agenda. More than 20,000 people have already joined, Bartning told the Post.

Bartning, who is Mexican and Yaqui on one side and Jewish on the other, said he was especially dismayed by how Riverdale and schools across the country force kids to label themselves based on their skin color. Sometimes kids are even given a palette and made to choose the color that best fits their skin, he said.

“I don’t fit into any of those race buckets,” Bartning told the Post. “I think it is wrong to be teaching kids these socially constructed race categories. It’s a destructive ideology, teaching children to be pessimistic and full of grievance rather than being optimistic and full of gratitude. It goes against all the values I was raised with, and there are many out there who feel as I do. This is a movement with a lot of people.”

In New York City, anonymous open letters complaining about critical race theory and bias training have been sent in recent weeks to administrators at such elite institutions as the $55,000-per-year Dalton School and the Jesuit Regis High School.

Bion Bartning formed the Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism (FAIR) to deter the promotion of critical race theory taught in schools. Marc Sagliocco for Rob Rich/SocietyAllure.com

Earlier this month, a math teacher at exclusive Grace Church in Manhattan published an open letter about what he called the “harmful” anti-racism and pedagogy at the school. He was later told to stay home.

The “underground” network has spread to public schools, too. Two Manhattan mothers who have kids in city schools lead the NYC chapter of FAIR and are speaking up, like Gutmann, in part to encourage others.

Maud Maron, a public defender with four children in local public schools who is also running for City Council, said she first ran across the so-called anti-racist ideology more than five years ago as part of her work on the Community Education Council.

“It’s a really divisive, ugly orthodoxy and it’s a multi-million dollar industry as well,” Maron told The Post. “It’s also very insidious because on the face of it, who wouldn’t want to sign up to be less racist?”

The $54,000-a-year Riverdale Country School reportedly taught children to label themselves based on their skin color, Bion Bartning says. J.C. Rice

Maron, who said her kids have been exposed to CRT in their public schools, said the ideology “may have started with some good intentions but now it’s like a cult. If you don’t go along with them, they think you are evil. But people should know that you can survive even if you speak out. Stand your ground and say what you believe. Don’t apologize for simple truths.”

Yiatin Chu, 53, Maron’s co-chair, is the co-president of Place NYC, an education advocacy group, and an immigrant from Taiwan who arrived in the U.S. at age 8. The oldest of her two children is out of college and never encountered CRT in school, Chu said. Her youngest, 10, is at the bilingual Mandarin school PS 184, one of the few public schools in NYC without a lot of anti-racism baked into the curriculum.

But Chu said she’s been vilified for speaking out against CRT as an activist.

“I’ve been called a ‘Karen’ and they’ve tried to pressure me into not speaking up,” Chu told The Post. “It can be very stressful, physically, emotionally and mentally. It feels like a mob is descending on you and calling you a racist for fighting for the kind of education you want for all children. it’s really nasty. I’ve seen it ruin lives.”

One Riverdale parent told The Post she will only go public if she decides to take her children out of the school.

“It’s awful what’s going on there,” she said. “The fourth graders learned about astronauts and inventors — but only black ones. They no longer learn about Thomas Edison. The math curriculum is a joke; they’ve dumbed it down. No more birthday celebrations are allowed and no holidays are allowed. They did away with Columbus Day but now they celebrate the end of Ramadan and the Chinese Lunar Year.”

Podcaster Megyn Kelly pulled her sons out of posh Collegiate last November after a letter allegedly circulated accusing white people of “reveling in state-sanctioned depravity” and comparing white children to “killer cops.”

But now, two parents told The Post, Collegiate administrators are listening to families at the school upset with the ideology.

The mother of a Collegiate student said she doesn’t want her name used because she still loves the school and hopes “things can improve from the inside.”

“We have not been stonewalled,” she said. “We are part of the silent majority — so far — who I hope can save these schools from continuing down the wrong path.”