Disclaimer

Before I get into details I would like you to know that this review is not about LGBTQ+, CRT or other Social Justice topics. This review is about sexualizing children, about what the school provides to its students as a knowledge, about the school's inability to differentiate the knowledge from ideology, about how the school cares more about current activists' topics than of the children's ability to learn to think independently.

Also, the information described below is accurate as of June 2022. I meant to publish this review at the end of the 2021-2022 school year, but for personal reasons I could not do it then, hence I am doing it now.

Definitions

Woke In CWS

On October 21, 2021 our son (5th Grade student at that time) came home and told us that at the school they had an LGBTQ+ presentation run by 8th Graders and the teacher [NN], and that "the school now has a gay club".

In our family we are not for or against anyone's beliefs. People are free to do what is best for them, as long as it is within the law and it does not limit the freedom of other people.

Unfortunately, the way that LGBT topic is being handled by Woke activists these days makes it very controversial, and so it did look strange that the Waldorf school would run a presentation on such a sensitive topic, especially without talking to parents first.

This drew our attention, and I contacted the teacher and the school administration. At first I thought that this was simply an initiative of one activist teacher and the school will be able to address this professionally. The school, however, did not, and during the next several months of extensive communication and investigation I found out that the Cedarwood Waldorf School changed its direction from traditional Waldorf to the Waldorf with Woke flavor, or rather Woke with Waldorf flavor.

During my investigation I learned that the Woke agenda is promoted by the AWSNA (Association of the Waldorf Schools of North America), the organization governing all Waldorf schools in USA, Canada and Mexico, and that Cedarwood School not only accepted the new direction, but enthusiastically acts on it.

When looking at the school's website people may get an impression that children are receiving a traditional Waldorf education. The website carefully selects words to avoid mentioning any non-Waldorf agenda, e.g. Diversity, Equity and Inclusion ideology is briefly mentioned without getting into detail to avoid undesired attention.

In reality though, the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Justice (DEIJ) Committee is the primary body defining the school's ideological direction. The Board of Trustees supports Woke, the Administration supports Woke, some Grade and Early Childhood teachers are Woke activists. GSA Club leader and teacher [NN] is on the Board of Trustees. Early Childhood activist teacher [AB] co-Chairs the DEIJ ideological committee.

Transition towards DEI is coming all the way from the Board of Trustees and it started and continued under the leadership of [BC]. As I was explained by the Board, the new Head of School was directed by the Board "to implement the numerous goals described within the school's 2019-2022 strategic plan, which specifically states the school’s objectives for Global Citizenship: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion". So the new Head of School was hired to implement this.

I would like to believe that most teachers in the school don't support Woke, but they still have to do what they are asked to do, and the school has enough activists that the Woke goals are now primary, while the Waldorf is, in effect, secondary.

GSA Club

School organized a faculty-led and sponsored GSA (LGBTQ+) club. The club's members run indoctrinating presentation in all Grades starting the 5th Grade (Elementary School). Non-academic presentations are run during class time with kids not given an option to opt out. Parents are not informed about non-academic topics being taught during class time.

Take a look at the Spirit Day presentation (download). This presentation was made by 8 Grade (2021-2022) members of the club under supervision of the teacher [NN]. Presentation was run in 5, 6, 7 & 8 Grades during regular class time without giving students an opportunity to opt out. Parents were not notified about the upcoming presentation, neither were they notified after. We accidentally found out about it from our son.

Even though the presentation was supposed to be about bullying, notice that only 2 (TWO) slides actually talk about bullying while the rest describe various non-traditional sexual orientations, instruct how to educate yourself and others, and how to promote LGBTQ+ agenda. The presentation provided a limited set of bright colorful flags to choose from, essentially encouraging children to pick one with the colors they like and have a new identity coming with it. After the presentation several 5th Grade students (10-11 year old children) chose their new identities — bisexual, lesbian, etc.

As far as I know, Waldorf encourages children's growth from within, exploring the world through observations and asking questions. However, here the students were being explicitly told what is right and what is wrong—based on the GSA Club leaders view—and then they were instructed what to do with this "knowledge".

Coincidentally, during the time I was communicating with the school on the above matter, an article on a similar topic was published by an author Abigail Shrier — How Activist Teachers Recruit Kids. It was very interesting to see that activists teachers described in this article used techniques similar to the ones used by CWS:

• GSA club organized by the school (notice the standard name as if they all follow the same playbook).
• GSA club's recruiting requests and LGBTQ+ propaganda hidden behind topics of freedom of choice, non-bullying and others.
• Influencing kids' selection using colorful and attractive materials.
• Not only making decisions affecting children and parents without consulting with parents, but also failing to inform parents about these decisions.

The next day Abigail Shrier posted another article — UPDATE from the School District re: Yesterday's Bombshell About Activist Teachers. The school district's actions were quick and efficient. Unfortunately, I can't say the same about CWS — they did nothing except accused me personally of creating "a hostile environment (or other discrimination)" and threatened to "trigger the School's duties under the law".

On December 17th, 2021, the Head of School sent an email to the 5th Grade parents and wrote that "if we had it to do again, we would let parents know in advance that the event was coming". They never admitted the presentation being inappropriate, particularly age-inappropriate for the Elementary School children. This suggests that the school will likely continue working in this direction.

GSA Club Success

One graduate (2021-2022) told us that in his/her class only 2 (TWO) students identified themselves as heterosexual while the rest of 20+ students (14-15 year old) chose one of the many non-traditional sexual orientations.

The school and its GSA Club success rate of ~90% children identifying as LGBTQ+ was much higher than ~7% nationwide.

I realize that Transgenderism and LGBTQQIP2SAA+ is a popular trend these days, especially non-LGB letters — T, Q, 2S, A and such, and that most students will review their choice in the future, but I find it to be very inappropriate for the school, especially Waldorf school, to confuse and indoctrinate children with activist topics.

I don't want the life choices of my children to be influenced by an activist teacher, or some 8th Grader, or anyone else except their parents.

It is not the school's role to brainwash and groom kids. The school was hired to teach HOW TO THINK, not WHAT TO THINK.

DEIJ Committee

From October of 2021 until May 2022 I participated in almost all DEIJ, Board of Trustees and Parent Council meetings that I was granted access to. What I found during this period is that the school's strategic direction is being defined by the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Justice (DEIJ) Committee, the body that was created in 2019 after new Head of School [SL] joined the school. It is similar to other ideological Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) units that recently popped up everywhere, the school just expressed some "creativity" and added "J" to the DEI's name.

When I joined the DEIJ Committee there was only one school employee there — [AB], the Early Childhood teacher and also the Co-Chair of the DEIJ Committee, while the rest were parents. After the Committee started getting questions that were legitimate, but too uncomfortable, the Head of School [SL] closed the Google Group and all future DEIJ meetings were postponed, and the Committee's goals were sent for reviewing and defining to the Board's Chair [BC].

Several months later the Board of Trustees came back with a new proposed DEIJ Committee structure which now allowed only 2 (TWO) parents to participate, the rest were the faculty, teachers and the Board members. For some reason I think that if the new structure stays, these 2 parents will be carefully selected to make sure that they agree with the DEI ideology.

At the time of us leaving the school in June of 2022 no new DEIJ Committee meetings were run since the last meeting in November, as if the school waited for disagreeing parents to leave first.

Among things discussed at DEIJ meetings there was one particular idea directly affecting children that I think should be mentioned:

• The school discussed the plans to convert all existing bathrooms into gender-neutral. This is in addition to several gender-neutral bathrooms that already existed in the school. Proponent of the change was another Co-Chair of the DEIJ Committee — [DWN]. I personally interacted with her and other members of DEIJ on this subject during one of the DEIJ Committee meetings. Fortunately (or unfortunately?), at that time the school did not have money to implement this project, but the school's Facilities Manager was asked to prepare an evaluation and so he did, therefore the project may still become live at some point.

Board of Trustees

The Board of Trustees is the highest authority of the School, at least it was before the DEIJ Committee was formed and became functional.

[BC] is likely the oldest member of the school's leadership team at this time — 8 (EIGHT) years according to his profile on CWS website. Everyone else comes, serves their term and goes, but he just moves between different positions while staying in leadership or nearby.

My experience of communicating with [BC], observing him speaking at the meetings and seeing how few words he wrote about himself in his profile on the Board of Trustee's page makes me think that he is a modest person who doesn't like to be publicly recognized for his hard work. I do, however, have reasons to believe that [BC] not only is in support of the school's transition to DEI, but is likely the organizer and leader of this transition:

1. Such a transition is a project that requires time and continuous supervision. The Head of School was hired to implement this transition, but someone had to define the requirements first and then monitor the implementation second. Executive members of the Board who preceded the hiring of the new Head are no longer in the Board with the exception of [TM] (the Secretary) and [BC]. I don't know of anyone else who in recent years held a position affecting the school's direction longer than [BC].
2. During one of the Board's meetings the activist parent and Co-Chair of DEIJ Committee [DWN] mentioned that the DEIJ Chairs struggle with defining the goals for the Committee (2 years after the Committee had started!), and no one, but [BC] offered a help. His willingness to work on the goals demonstrated his interest and knowledge on the subject, as well as that he has ideas on how to move the school in the DEI direction.
3. When mentioning the school's DEIJ work, he refers to it by the more common name DEI, not DEIJ. I would like to believe that after several years of the Committee's existence an intelligent person like [BC] is capable of remembering the correct name. Therefore it looks like even though he accepted the school's "creativity" of adding J (for Justice), he is not willing to use the modified name himself.

[BC] was the Board's Chair several times for many years, and at the end of 2021 he stepped down from the Chair's position, but remains in the Board. He also serves as a mentor to the new Chair [RJ].

New and old Chairs' children are classmates, and I don't know if this fact played any role in selecting a candidate for [BC]'s replacement.

Also, as far as I know, the Board requires their members to have a minimum of 3 year commitment. At the time of starting as a new Chair, however, [RJ]'s child only had 2.5 years left in school. I don't know if I misunderstood the rule, or if the rule has changed since I checked it last time, or if an exception was made for this particular candidate.

I recognize and appreciate the fact that during his term as a Chair [BC] allowed guests on the Board's meetings. It makes sense that parents have access to the meetings defining the shape of the school and directly affecting their children. I don't know if guest parents will be allowed at DEIJ Committee meetings, but I know that the new Chair of the Board of Trustees expressed her unwillingness to allow non-members attend the Board's meetings.

People Leave

After the 2021-2022 year the 5th Grade had 2 families left in a protest of the school's shift from Waldorf. Another family had likely left for the same reason (or this was one of the reasons), but they did not announce that.

Notably, at the end of the same school year the Pedagogical Director of the school, who served Cedarwood for 23 years—probably the longest at that time, since almost the very beginning—had left the school. It would be interesting to know the reasons for such a departure after 23 years of commitment given that she moved just to another local Waldorf School to hold the same position of Pedagogical Director.

Early Childhood

To us as parents, the best experience that our 3 children had at the school was in the Early Childhood program. We were very lucky that our children had such wonderful teachers as Ms. Susan, Ms. Alice, Ms. Stephanie, Ms. Erin. These teachers are truly magicians!

In all the years that my children were with these teachers during the Early Childhood program I had not had a single worry about my kids when they were in the school. From multiple interactions and observations I saw that our children and their classmates were the only priority that these teachers had in school.

For us it worked well that the teachers focused on Waldorf and were not bringing their personal views and beliefs into the classroom.

I do recognize though that some parents may feel that they are progressive and they see no harm in mixing in some questionable ideas into the Waldorf pedagogy. Such people may find it beneficial to bring their kids to the Cedar Rose Class and its teacher [AB], who is also a Co-Chair of the school's Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Justice Committee.

I don't have experience with [AB] as a teacher, but I do know her from the DEIJ work and a few DEIJ Committee meetings that I attended. I also found her written thoughts after attending the WECAN Conference: Black Lives Matter conference and her profile on WECAN's website, which may be beneficial for parents to read.

Here are clickable screenshots for readers' convenience:

Allowing a Social Justice activist teacher to work with my children is not my cup of tea. Knowing that the teacher of my 3-4 year old child believes that "by the age of 3 years old, children have already internalized racial and gender narratives" and she is ready to talk to them about "the issues of race, gender, class, and identity" would put me on a high alert. I expect the teachers of my children to be professionals and be capable of keeping their personal views and beliefs outside the school and not exposing them to my children. But as I mentioned, I do understand that other parents may have a different view on pedagogy and what is appropriate for their children.

Grade Classes & Academics

Academically the school may be good for average students, but it does not seem to have resources to support students who are not average. I happen to have 2 children who are on the opposite sides of the academic spectrum. The child who could do everything easier than most of his classmates was never challenged. The child who had struggled with academics (no medical issues) finished the 3rd Grade unable to read, write and do math.

Bullying

As far as I know the school does not have bullying as an ongoing issue. However, things do happen and how they are handled depends on the teacher, then on the administration.

One of our children had a new student who apparently had struggled to integrate into a new environment, and that time was not easy for our child. However, the teacher seemed to have handled it well and things got resolved.

We also heard from two other families that their children had been bullied in their class. The teacher's view on things was that "we are one big happy family" and she was unable to handle the situation efficiently. As a result, one family had to remove their child from the school.

When my oldest son was in his 1st Grade (he is now 6th Grader), during recess one of his classmates hit him with a hand and broke his tooth. Our son explained that this was not a fight or bullying, but just an accident. I understand that things happen, but I was disappointed that the school did nothing even though this happened during school time, neither did the parents of this boy find it necessary to at least call and apologize. A few years later my son and this boy became very good friends. Also 5 years later this boy's older sister was one of the authors of the Spirit Day presentation that my son and his friend had in their class, the presentation that triggered my investigation and resulted in us leaving the school and me writing this review. Life is an interesting thing.

COVID-19

New Head of School joined the school in 2019 and she led the school through COVID-19 pandemic. Under her leadership the school was able to quickly and efficiently organize remote learning. The same computer technologies were used for the virtual meetings of the DEIJ Committee as well as the meetings of the Board of Trustees. Unfortunately, the school did not find it necessary to put efforts and use the same technology to maintain the Parent Council meetings, and so the communication between parents and the school was essentially reduced to one-way communication through emails from the school.

The masking policies enforced by the Head of School was another reason for us to leave the school.

When the state and CDC mandated masking, the school had no choice but to comply. When masking became optional, [SL] continued mandating masking for longer than it was required by the authorities and done by similar organizations, e.g. Portland Public Schools.

Forced masking on children results in damages to their physical, psychological and emotional health. I can see it in my children, particularly in my middle son, and so I don't need any arguments from anyone to know that the damage had occurred and what caused it.

At the same time, I found no data supporting the theory that masking children slows down the spread of COVID among adults. Children wore masks for about 2 years, yet a huge number of adults somehow got sick with COVID during these years and they still do. To us this clearly indicates that the sacrifice that our children were forced to be making for 2 long years provided no expected benefit.

The CDC link in one of [SL]'s latest email (May, 2022) about masking had a highlighted paragraph on the top of the page saying "Though CDC seeks to update Science Briefs when and as appropriate, given ongoing changes in scientific evidence, an individual Science Brief might not reflect CDC’s current understanding of that topic". The Head of School took action on the document that was last updated 6 months prior to that, and even the authors of it wrote that they may now disagree with its content.

The CDC removing themselves from enforcing masking indirectly confirmed that the danger is not there anymore, and therefore they no longer wanted to take personal responsibility, but would rather delegate it down to someone else.

As far as I was told, kids attending the 2022 Summer Camps still had to wear masks.

The school never requested the students to be vaccinated against COVID-19 and I do appreciate this fact.

Parent Rights

Besides 2 seats in the DEIJ Committee parents otherwise have 0 (ZERO) influence on the school direction:

• Membership in the Board of Trustees is granted by the vote of existing members only. Naturally, only parents with views aligned with views of the Board will have a chance to be approved.
• Parent Council (PC), as I was explained by the Board, is for organizing school events and that is it. PC Members are expected to spend their time and energy on organizing teacher lunches, auctions and other events, but they have zero influence on what the school does to their children.
• The rest of the parents are expected to volunteer, comply and pay. Their opinion, in my experience, does not matter unless it is in line with the administration and the Board's ideology.

According to the Handbook, all concerns should be brought to the teacher, or Pedagogical Director, or the Board. This is an effective way to silence the voices of concerns. Parents are allowed to communicate with each other, but do so outside the school's official channels. Technically, the school does not disallow parents to communicate in the class' Google Group about school life, but only if they don't question the schools policies and direction, otherwise the Group would be shut down.

In my experience and in the experience of other parents who had left the school, concerns of the parents brought up using officially approved channels were effectively silenced and lead to nowhere, leaving the parents only with an option to leave.

What to do

Private school is a long and expensive project, but even more important is the fact that some adults will have exclusive access to your child's brain for several hours a day, several days a week. Therefore you may want to know who these people are who will be affecting your child's view on the world and what knowledge your child will be getting from them.

If you are interested in a traditional Waldorf education and thinking about CWS, I recommend you to carefully look into what CWS is actually doing to see if it meets the needs of your family. Don't trust words, look at actions! Ask questions! If you found no red flags and decided to join, I strongly recommend that you attend the Board of Trustees & the DEIJ Committee meetings (if they still allow guests).

If you joined the school, then keep all records, have everything in writing!

I do have emails from the Board, the Head of School and other school officials in which they made multiple unsupported accusations. To my follow-up requests they failed to provide evidence to support their words essentially making their accusations baseless. Having everything in writing may help in case the school or anyone mentioned in the review decides to take any action against me or my family based on this review or anything else. I will consider contacting public media and legal firms and provide them with these documents if I need to defend my family and my name.

List of Updates

07/22/23 — Added a chapter Gender Ideology as a Tool of Bullying.

05/03/23 — On April 19th, 5 days after I posted Part II I received an email from CWS saying that the Head of School [SL] "has recently announced her retirement". Two days later my wife and I met with the Interim Chief Administrative Officer [AC] and Pedagogical Director [MC], who both demonstrated their intent to continue moving the school in the direction of DEI and Transgender Ideology. [AC], who is also a parent in our son's former class, demonstrated their intent to continue harassing and discriminating our 12 year old son using made up reasons.

04/14/23 — Added Part II describing how the school now bullies my son for his parent's "sins".

12/20/22 — I noticed that the Board of Trustees page no longer contains [BC]'s profie. I can provide timestamped screenshots if needed.

12/18/22 — I temporarily removed the links to the Spirit Day presentation on Canva.com and PDF with screenshots of the presentation on the same website. I restored the links after I read the article (screenshot) explaining that the link could be accessed by anyone only if the author explicitly changes the permission from default "Only people added can access" to one of "Anyone with the link (with view access)", "View-only link", "Watch links", or "Template link". Since anyone with the link above can access it, this indicates that the author explicitly chose to share it with anyone.

12/18/22 — Per request of my son's former teacher I removed a paragraph where I mentioned her resignation with my thoughts about the reasons.