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“And it’s visible displays of support for LGBTQ students like Pride flags are all critical components of creating a kind of welcoming environment that helps young people be successful in schools,” she said. LGBTQ students experience stronger academic outcomes as well as more positive emotional and mental health outcomes when schools are inclusive and affirming, Willingham-Jaggers said. It’s going to be interesting for the court to wrestle with that.” A show of affirmation and support that leads to improved academic outcomesįor students of color and LGBTQ students, who disproportionately experience discrimination in school buildings, symbols such as a Black Lives Matter poster or a Pride flag can be useful tools for navigating their social and physical surroundings, according to Melanie Willingham-Jaggers, the interim executive director of GLSEN, an LGBTQ awareness and inclusion advocacy group. “But to what extent are they both messages of inclusion, as well as potentially political statements? I don’t know the answer to that. “I think it’s pretty typical to go into a public school these days and find those symbols for those express purposes, of helping all students feel included and welcome,” Geisel said. Its newest policy that bans “political or controversial” symbols might be much harder to challenge, Geisel said. “If their policy just singles out certain viewpoints and is not generally applicable, that’s problematic,” he said. In Newberg’s case, the first policy the school board passed in August 2021 that specifically banned rainbow flags and Black Lives Matter symbols would likely have been “discriminatory,” Geisel said. A school board has the right to tell teachers what they can or can’t do if it’s trying to eliminate disruption to learning, assuming the board’s policies come from a neutral perspective, he said.
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BLACK GAY FLAG FREE
Generally speaking, teachers have few rights when it comes to free speech in the classroom, said, Richard Geisel, a lawyer and professor of educational leadership at Grand Valley State University in Michigan. “The BLM and LGBTQ ideology and curriculum are shattering the innocence of children, promoting racial divide, and negatively impacting the lives of our kids forever.” Teachers’ free speech rights are limited “There are only two genders and all lives matter,” she said during a school board meeting in August, according to a recording. Newberg parent Raquel Peregrino de Britoa said LGBTQ propaganda causes gender dysphoria, BLM is designed to be divisive and schools should instead be about math and reading. “And it creates a chilling effect for our staff, which does impede on our free speech.”Īt the August board meeting, several parents urged the board to reconsider the directive, but a few were in support of the ban on Black Lives Matter and Pride flags.
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“Who’s going to be the arbiter of what is considered controversial?” he said. The vagueness around the definitions of “controversial” and “political” have caused confusion among educators, Gallagher said.
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Andrew Gallagher, a high school history teacher and a plaintiff in the teachers’ union lawsuit, said that he believes the board members’ agenda is driven by a national movement to censor conversations about race and gender in the classroom. The district’s teachers’ union, along with the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon, has sued, calling the ban arbitrary, confusing and an infringement on teachers’ free speech. It is political,” Newberg school board chair Dave Brown, who voted for the ban, said during a school board meeting last summer. “We’ve hijacked a beautiful rainbow sticker into something different. In Newberg, the uproar started when school board members issued a directive at an August 2021 meeting ordering the superintendent to enforce removal of all Black Lives Matter and Pride flag posters, banners, stickers, pins, and clothing from school buildings.Ī month later, the board scrapped the policy based on legal advice and passed a new iteration which banned all symbols that can be considered “political, quasi-political, or controversial.” Last fall, a teacher in Iowa was put on administrative leave after he included the Pride flag in a presentation about images that described him and told students - when asked - that he was bisexual, according to the Des Moines Register.Īnd in September 2021, a teacher in Missouri resigned after being forced to take down a Pride flag in his classroom and forced to sign a letter prohibiting him from discussing sexuality or sexual preference, according to USA Today.