A new watchdog report alleges that City Schools of Decatur, a small public school district just outside Atlanta, quietly removed race-focused materials from its website and rewrote equity policies to evade federal scrutiny. The Defense of Freedom Institute for Policy Studies published the findings, claiming the district ran a years-long, multimillion-dollar DEI agenda and then worked to conceal it once federal funding was placed at risk.
The Spending Trail
DFI's report documents what it describes as a sustained institutional commitment to race-centered programming between 2017 and 2024. The district spent more than two million dollars on DEI initiatives overall, with roughly $1.8 million of that sum going toward salaries for equity department staff, according to figures DFI attributes to a report by local outlet Decaturish.
The curriculum-facing component was equally expansive. CSD deployed "Beyond Diversity" seminars and a framework called "Courageous Conversations About Race" in teacher training. District infrastructure documents, as cited by DFI, directed educators to recognize that curriculum had historically been grounded in "Eurocentric principles" and to build capacity to "decolonize curriculum and praxis." Equity teams were established in every school, placing self-described anti-racist leaders in positions with the authority to center race in instructional decisions. The district also created a Justice, Action, Diversity, and Equity course aimed specifically at middle school students.
The Cover-Up Allegation
The crackdown arrived with the Trump administration's enforcement of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act against school systems operating allegedly discriminatory DEI offices. Facing federal directives to demonstrate compliance, CSD officials moved to scrub the public record. DFI found that "Equity @ CSD"—an online database of the district's DEI and Critical Race Theory materials—disappeared from the website along with references to the equity department itself. In April 2025, the school board formally rescinded its equity policy.
DFI Senior Counsel Paul Zimmerman said in a statement to Fox News Digital that the district "went to great lengths to enact a racially discriminatory agenda and then hide its unlawful behavior from federal oversight." He argued that directing teachers to attribute achievement gaps to white supremacy was "totally unhelpful to the mission of educating students."
Changes in Name Only
The most direct evidence of intent, according to the report, came from within the district's own board meetings. The board's vice chairman stated during one session that removing the policy was "not stopping us from doing the work—it's stopping us from using the words."
DFI concluded that the district did not genuinely abandon its DEI agenda following federal pressure, but instead briefly rescinded equity-related policies, later reinstated them, and sanitized its public-facing materials to minimize exposure. City Schools of Decatur did not respond to requests for comment from Fox News Digital.