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The pride flags, created to promote unity, are now labeled political and divisive in some schools across America. In just one recent example, an Oregon school board banned educators from displaying flags on Tuesday.
“We don’t pay our teachers to impose their political views on our students. It’s not their place, ”Newberg school board member and policy writer Brian Shannon said in a taped board meeting.
Several other cases have occurred of school officials and students across the country targeting LGBTQ symbols. A Missouri teacher resigned last month after he was told to remove a rainbow flag from his classroom and couldn’t discuss “sexual preferences” at school. Several weeks ago, students at a high school near Jacksonville, Fla. Were accused of harassing classmates at a Gay Straight Alliance club and trampling pride flags. And in August, the pride symbols were targeted at a high school near Dallas, where rainbow stickers were ordered to be removed from classroom doors.
In most cases where school officials target the symbols themselves, administrators have defended their actions by saying that LGBTQ emblems are divisive and “political.” But LGBTQ students, parents and teachers affected by the bans argue the new rules hurt a vulnerable group of young people.
“Feeling safe shouldn’t be political,” said Victor Frausto, 16, gay and a student at MacArthur High School in Irving, Texas, just outside Dallas. “For me, when a teacher put this sticker on, they basically conveyed the following message, ‘When you come here you won’t be hated for who you love or what you identify with. “”
The decision by school officials to ban Rainbow Pride stickers sent a very different message, Frausto added.
“Seeing how these stickers were taken off, you get the message ‘I’m not going in here, I shouldn’t be here’,” he said.
Frausto, who is the president of his school’s Gay Straight Alliance (GSA), said the rainbow stickers were removed overnight without warning.
When he and other student GSA members noticed it, they reported it to their GSA sponsors, a group of teachers who had previously received an email from the school district about it.
“While we appreciate the feeling of reaching out to students who may not have always had such support before, we want to set a different tone this year,” the email reads. a teacher shared with NBC News.
Educators reassured the group that they would push for an explanation and fight to recover the stickers from the classroom doors, Frausto said. But over the next few days, two teachers were escorted off campus, according to Frausto.
A spokesperson for the Irving School District declined to identify the teachers and, when asked about their alleged dismissals, told NBC News that the district “does not comment on matters related to employees.”
In response to the sticker removal, hundreds of students held a class walkout last week. In a video posted Wednesday by the community journalism platform Smash Da Topic, students can be heard shouting, “Bring back our stickers!”
Following the demonstration, the district, in a declaration, defended the decision as a way “to ensure that all students feel safe, regardless of their origin or identity”, while maintaining political impartiality.
In Newberg, administrators also invoked political neutrality in defending their policy. After fierce criticism for specifically banning the Pride and Black Lives Matter flags, school board members expanded a ban in September to prevent educators from displaying any symbols the board deemed “political, quasi-political or controversial.” .
“Their role is to teach the approved curriculum, and that’s all this policy does is make sure that happens in our schools,” said Shannon, one of the seven board members. administration of the Newberg school district who led the policy, in a live board meeting Tuesday night.
Newberg City Council and the Newberg Education Association, a union representing 280 district educators and staff, spoke out against the policy and the Oregon State Board of Education called for it to be revoked. Members of the Newberg community have also called for Shannon’s recall.
“As a gay man with no children and no real desire to have children, I feel like I should never know the names of school board members, let alone stand up to them,” Zachary said. Goff, a resident of Newberg. who started the petition, which received over 1,000 signatures.
“I think I speak for a lot of people in my community, but we can’t sit here and let that happen,” Goff added. “They chose a very bad city to be the guinea pig.”
Chelsea Shotts, 29, who is bisexual and works at an elementary school as a behavioral advocate in the Newberg School District, said her mental health had deteriorated since the district policy was introduced during of summer.
“If I only cared about myself, I would just quit – like quitting and going easily,” Shotts said. “But the point is, I’m in Newberg and Dundee because I love these students and they deserve everything.”
“I would rather be able to stay here and keep doing the job instead of being attacked by a culture war that four board members have started,” Shotts added.
School administrators aren’t the only ones going after pride flags and LGBTQ symbols this school year.
Police in Blacksburg, Va. Are investigating several incidents of stolen Pride flags outside a Virginia Tech religious center. In one case, the LGBTQ symbols were replaced with two Confederate flags. And in Georgia, a high school student was charged last month for attack another student draped in a pride flag in a school cafeteria.
Advocates have long warned educators of the disproportionate rates of bullying, harassment and mental health issues suffered by LGBTQ youth.
A 2021 survey by The Trevor Project, a suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization for LGBTQ youth, found that 42% of the nearly 35,000 LGBTQ youth surveyed had seriously considered suicide in the past. the last year. More than half of transgender and non-binary youth surveyed seriously considered suicide, he also found.
A separate survey conducted by The Trevor Project in 2020 found that LGBTQ youth who reported having at least one LGBTQ affirmation space reported lower rates of suicide attempts.
Beth Woolsy, who is bisexual and has two LGBTQ children who attend school in Newberg, said the heartbreaking numbers continue to weigh on her as she sends her children back to school every day.
“When we understand that it is really life or death that we are talking about when we send our children to school, and then they have lost the security of knowing who they can turn to and who to turn to. can expect to defend them, it’s really scary, ”she said.
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