Christian teachers fled public school in California, started anti-woke online alternative

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Kali Fontanilla

By Antonio Pellot —

The turning point for Kali Fontanilla came when a school administrator gave her a Covid mask that read: “Black Educators Matter”.

“I don’t want to be recognized for my skin color, I want to be recognized for the work I have done as a teacher in the classroom,” says Kali, who is half black and half white. “What if a white teacher wore a ‘white educators matter’ mask? It’s making a political statement. Me wearing a black educators matter mask is a political statement.”

After witnessing the growing politicization in West Coast schools, Kali and her husband called it quits on their California teaching jobs. The Christian couple moved to Florida to start an anti-woke, patriotic online school, where kids can still honor the heroes of America’s past.

Josh and Kali Fontanilla

The Exodus Institute highlights “traditional American values” to counteract the increasing indoctrination in public schools with socialism, LGBTQ, dividing race groups into resentful subsets, and promoting a victim mentality, Kali, 41, told the Daily Mail.

Exodus Institute started in 2022 with one student and now has 200 kids in its K-12 program.

“In general, being a conservative or just somebody who believes in traditional American values is something that makes you marked in the public school system,” Kali’s husband, Joshua, 42, says. “It’s gotten to the point in public schools where you can’t just mind your own business and keep your politics to yourself because they push it on everyone that you have to participate in liberal politics.”

The couple moved to Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis is fighting the tide of woke-ism with such efforts as the Stop WOKE Act.

Kali’s husband is also a “person of color.” He’s of half Mexican and half Puerto Rican descent. But they have bristled at the race-baiting and the push of queer ideology.

“I’m trying to dispel the myth that the American dream is only for white Americans, like what they are trying to push on you guys in the mainstream media, or they’re trying to push in our public schools,” Kali told her students in a clip released to DailyMail.

When Kali began in public school at age 22 (she taught English in Salinas, California), schools weren’t politicized, she says. “There are a lot of things teachers didn’t have to face at that time. There wasn’t pressure to put pronouns in your bio, or in your email [signature],” she says. “There wasn’t pressure to ask your students about their pronouns. There weren’t co-workers claiming their white privilege.”

But hard-left politics invaded schools following George Floyd’s murder in May 2020, she says. That’s when she was given a “gift for black teachers” from the school superintendent, a mask trumpeting the message “Black Educators Matter.”

When the Covid lockdowns of California went into effect (the LAUSD teachers union refused to reopen until police got defunded), Kali and Joshua decided to relocate to Florida where politics weren’t steeped in woke-ism. They called their new school “The Exodus Institute,” as in “leave the public schools in mass exodus.”

‘It’s a counter, it’s anti-woke and it’s refuting the lies that are taught by the left,” Joshua says. “But really it’s just going back to traditional American values.”

Exodus Institute focuses on traditional education: math, science, history, French, business. Critical thinking, writing skills and reading comprehension are emphasized instead of leftist politics.

The cost ranges from $2,000-per-year up to $8,000-per-year. Parents can also take advantage of voucher programs in some states to cover the cost.

An outgrowth offering of Exodus is the Young Patriots Academy, which is a $29-a-month supplementary course for parents who homeschool, and includes over 100 recorded lessons on race, culture and the American Dream.

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About the writer of this article: Antonio Pellot lives in North Hollywood (Los Angeles) and studies at the Lighthouse Christian Academy.