A small Silicon Valley school district approved $189,000 for a taxpayer-funded “energy healer” in May despite tight budgeting, which has resulted in cuts to elective classes and understaffing.
Mountain View Whisman School 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 district has paid the energy healer more than $315,000 over three years, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
“It’s mind-boggling,” one parent, who chose to remain anonymous, told the Chronicle. “We’re so angry here.”
Parents of children within the district discovered the spending in a review of the district’s finances in the spring after it revealed it would cut some elective middle school classes, according to the Chronicle. The district’s budget also included $180,000 to a D.C. public relations firm and another $600,000 annually for leadership coaching.
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.
“Why are we spending all this money? It’s not going to teachers. It doesn’t help our kids one bit,” the parent said, according to the Chronicle. “We assumed the board was doing their job.”
One former teacher in the district said that her school suffered from a lack of funding, with no custodian or sufficient substitute teachers, leaving teachers overworked and underpaid, according to the Chronicle. She also claimed that principals and other administrators were away for the healing sessions weekly and were unavailable.
“There was so much burnout because we were subbing constantly and we had crazy class sizes,” the teacher told the Chronicle. “There was no one to turn to if there was fighting or there was bullying or there was a threat from a student.”
The district’s superintendent, Ayindé Rudolph, defended the district’s decision to hire the healer, saying “all the tech industries around us do it,” according to the Chronicle.
“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.”
Many students in the district are failing to meet testing standards, with only 24% of Hispanic students, who make up the majority of the district, reaching grade level in math and 32% reaching grade level in English, according to the Chronicle.
The district did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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