The vagueness around the definitions of “controversial” and “political” have caused confusion among educators, Gallagher said. 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.
#Gay pride flag teacher free#
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.