USPIE’s September Millstone Award goes to California superintendent who defends hiring ‘energy healer’

A northern California school district has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on a New Age guru who instructs staff in “energy healing” techniques.

United States Parents Involved in Education’s (USPIE) Millstone of the Month Award is given to the person or organization involved in government schools who has committed the most egregious acts against children. The September Millstone of the Month Award recipient is Mountain View Whisman School Superintendent Ayindé Rudolph for defending the district’s decision to hire the healer, saying “all the tech industries around us do it.”

“This is not only a glaring waste of taxpayer money but an unconstitutional establishment of religion,” says Sheri Few, founder and president of Parents Involved in Education (USPIE). “The concepts being taught are straight out of Hinduism and other Eastern religions. How is this okay when the Bible — the foundational text of America’s founding — is banned?”

The latest contract for $189,000 for this religious exercise program comes at a time when the Mountain View Whisman schools are facing cutbacks and teacher shortages, according to the Daily Caller.

The district hired the energy healer to “help leaders manage and reduce daily stress levels that negatively impact their wellbeing and therefore their effectiveness in role,” according to the contract. The school system has paid the energy healer more than $315,000 over three years, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Parents discovered the spending in the spring after the district announced that it would cut some elective middle school classes. The district’s budget also includes $180,000 to a Washington, D.C. public relations firm and another $600,000 annually for leadership coaching.

“I think the wellness of our employees is worth every dollar,” Rudolph told the Chronicle. “How well our schools do is predicated on how well our teachers and our leaders do … I think we’ve come to a point where all organizations have to take employee stress seriously.”

The energy healer is meant to facilitate “spiritual development and awakening” and uses “sacred geometry to do chakra clearing and alignment and to perform energy healing on the spiritual, physical and emotional levels,” according to her website.

One client testimony on the site says that after “the healing sessions,” she “realized I had formed the wrong belief of the Divine as a child and I could spontaneously let it go!”

“Where’s the ACLU when it comes to this stuff?” Few said. “The self-appointed guardians of the First Amendment are quick to quash any mention of America’s Judeo-Christian founding.”

One former teacher said that her school had no custodian or enough substitute teachers, leaving teachers overworked and underpaid, according to the Chronicle. She also said that principals and other administrators were away for the healing sessions weekly and were unavailable.

Meanwhile, only 24% of Hispanic students, who make up the majority of the district, are reaching grade-level proficiency in math and 32% in English.

“When are parents going to wake up and realize that they need to get their children out of these failing schools?” Few said. “USPIE will keep shining a light on the dark side of government schools so that parents can make the best choice for their child.”

United States Parents Involved in Education (USPIE) is a nonprofit, nationwide coalition that seeks to return education to its proper local roots and restore parental authority over their children’s education by helping parents and local communities to escape federal and other national influences. It is the vision of USPIE to create a culture where parents, empowered with the authority to choose what and how their children learn, are the undisputed primary educators of their children, where local schools operate in support of families, and where education is unencumbered by federal mandates.

For more information on United States Parents Involved in Education, visit www.uspie.org or follow  USPIE on Facebook or Twitter.