Grand Forks teacher resigns over ‘unethical,’ ‘insulting’ equity policies

State Representative Kasper drafting supportive legislation

After teaching in Grand Forks Public Schools for 13 years, math teacher Chris Loff decided this summer to leave his district.

Loff sent a seven-page resignation letter to school district leadership outlining his reasons for leaving. His letter, (which was later shared to Facebook), criticizes the district’s gender ideologies and CRT training, stressing the negative effect they’ve had on teachers.

“It is beyond insulting that GFPS leadership thinks teachers are so morally incompetent that they need to be trained on how to treat others of different demographic categories with respect and dignity,” the letter reads.

“To put it simply, these gender policies, and listening to district administration about these gender policies, caused me to lose all faith in Grand Forks Public Schools,” Loff continues.

Loff further asserts that “It’s now been years since professional development focused on improving academic learning, replaced by belittling and incoherent DEIB [Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging] trainings.”

“First, for professional development trainings, stop wasting teachers time with belittling, intelligence insulting, illogical, immoral, anti-factual, politically-left propaganda of manipulated definitions of: diversity, equity, inclusivity, belonging, cultural competence, intersectionality, racism, antiracism, systemic racism, intersectionality, gender and all of its terms, cisnormativity, heteronormativity, implicit bias, power, privilege, white supremacy,…, and others. (Emphasis added.)

They are foundationally adversarial, unnecessarily pinning two or more groups of people against each other, which means they will unavoidably create more division and hatred when supposedly that is what these ideas are supposed to alleviate.

“This is my final attempt to help you realize what you are doing to teachers and our community,” the letter continues.

After submitting his resignation, Loff reached out to State Representative Jim Kasper (R-Fargo). After sharing Loff’s story with “every member of the ND legislature,” Kasper announced plans to draft legislation to “eliminate these kinds of teachings and actions in our ND Schools.”

“I wish tremendous success for GFPS, because our teachers, parents, and most of all our students, deserve so much better than what district leadership has given them,” Loff’s letter ends. “You have the power to right the ship. Please do so immediately.”