Florida teacher tells school board, "No one is teaching your kids to be gay! …I have math to teach"
Presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis' campaign of fear and discrimination in Florida is driving teachers out of the state. In the school district where one teacher recently became the focus of a state Department of Education investigation for showing kids a Disney film that happens to include a gay character, a recent school board meeting erupted:
"No one is teaching your kids to be gay!" she told them. "Sometimes, they just are gay. I have math to teach. I literally don't have time to teach your kids to be gay."
All told, some 50 teachers in the county school system are making plans to resign. But the teachers weren't the only ones pushing back at the meeting: parents and students stepped up to condemn the right-wing activists as well.
"War on woke? More like war on your children's future," said one student at the meeting.
This comes as similar pushback from parents against far-right attacks is happening in schools all over the country, and as "nine Democratic governors representing nearly 9 million students have sent a letter to leading textbook companies decrying 'the negative impact that censorship and book-banning has on this nation's students,'" Sargent and Waldman noted.
This is happening in Hernando County, a pretty conservative part of Florida. DeSantis carried the county by over 40 points but the parents of this school district are upset. Perhaps people will stop voting out of spite when they are faced with the actual policies the leaders they're voting for start hurting their kids.
Education is the only way out of this situation long term, and the Republicans are doing all they can to ban what we can teach and what we can read.
DMT.NEWS
via https://www.DMT.NEWS
Jason Weisberger, Khareem Sudlow
