An Oregon school board banned teachers from displaying pride flags or Black Lives Matter symbols last week.
“We don’t pay our teachers to push their political views on our students. That’s not their place,” Brian Shannon, the Newberg School Board’s vice chairman said at a board meeting. “Their place is to teach the approved curriculum, and that’s all this policy does, is ensure that’s happening in our schools.”
The Newberg Education Association, a union representing 280 educators and staff in the district, blasted the decision on Facebook, writing “It’s clear their personal politics are stronger than any real desire to come together as a school community. We cannot let this group of 4 [school board members who supported the ban] impose their own political agenda, erode our rights, and strip our support of our students. Our educators are united in their goal to create classrooms where students can walk in and feel like they belong.”
The Washington Post provides important context:
The decision in suburban Portland follows a pair of recent racist incidents at Newberg Public Schools. In one of them, a staff member showed up for work in blackface in an apparent protest of the district’s coronavirus vaccine mandate for employees and was subsequently fired.
The Post adds:
At least one student at Newberg High School has been linked to a Snapchat group called “Slave Trade,” the Graphic reported, where teenagers nationwide share racist, homophobic and violent messages. The Snapchat group sometimes specifically targets Black students.
NBC News situates the banning of pride flags, in particular, as part of a disturbing nationwide trend:
A teacher resigned in Missouri last month after he was told to remove a rainbow flag from his classroom and that he couldn’t discuss “sexual preference” at school. Students at a high school near Jacksonville, Florida, were accused several weeks ago of harassing classmates in a Gay Straight Alliance club and stomping on pride flags. And in August, pride symbols were targeted at a high school near Dallas, where rainbow stickers were ordered to be scraped off classroom doors.
“For me, when a teacher put up that sticker, it basically conveyed the message that ‘when you come in here, you will not be hated for who you love or what you identify as,’” Victor Frausto, a 16 year-old gay student at MacArthur High School in Irving, Texas told NBC News about the school’s decision to ban rainbow stickers.
“By seeing how those stickers were removed, you get the message that ‘I do not fit in here, I should not be here,’” he added.
Hundreds of students walked out of classrooms to protest the sticker ban. But school officials doubled down afterwards, explaining in a statement that the prohibition was designed “to ensure that all students feel safe regardless of background or identity” by maintaining political impartiality.
NBC News adds:
A survey this year by The Trevor Project, an LGBTQ youth suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization, found that 42 percent of the nearly 35,000 LGBTQ youths who were surveyed seriously considered suicide within the last year. More than half of transgender and nonbinary youths who were surveyed seriously considered suicide, it also found.
