LAS VEGAS — (10-03-21) — The Newburg School Board have ignited outrage after banning  LGBT Pride symbols and Black Lives Matter symbols from school grounds.  While School districts across the country have been attempting to promote unity, we have others who are claiming that all they are doing is being “divisive and political” according to conservatives in school districts across America.

one in particular is the  Newberg School Board who last week banned not only LGBT PRIDE symbols but also Black Lives Matter symbols from being displayed on school grounds.

“We don’t pay our teachers to push their political views on our students. That’s not their place,” said  school board member in Newberg and the policy’s author, Brian Shannon, during their zoom recorded board meeting.

 

Pushback over the policy and related bans were immediate as the Newberg Education Association, Newberg’s teachers union and the Oregon House Democratic Caucus condemned the move.

You remember JRL CHARTS reporting on openly gay Missouri teacher John M. Wallis being forced to remove a Pride Flag from his classroom bookshelf last month! Now in another example, an Oregon school board last Tuesday banned educators from displaying the pride flags anywhere on school grounds.

Example of conservatives targeting the LGBT students:

• “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.

• In August, LGBT Pride symbols were targeted at a high school near Dallas, where rainbow stickers were ordered to be “scraped off of classroom doors.”

• On September 21, Utah school district has banned LGBTQ pride and Black Lives Matter flags, saying they are ‘politically charged’

“Feeling safe should not be political,” said president of MacArthur High School’s Gay Straight Alliance (GSA), 16 year-old student Victor Frausto, “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.’” said Frausto.

Frausto felt that the decision by school officials to discriminate against the LGBT rainbow Pride stickers sent a very different message. “By seeing how those stickers were removed, you get the message that ‘I do not fit in here, I should not be here,’” said Frausto.

Frausto added that the rainbow stickers were removed overnight without warning.

When he and other GSA student members noticed, they brought it to the attention of their GSA sponsors, a group of teachers who had already received an email from the school district concerning the removal of LGBT symbols from school grounds.

“The educators reassured the GSA students that they would push for an explanation and fight to get the stickers back on classroom doors,” said Frausto. However within 72 hours two teachers were escorted off campus for voicing objection to the removal of LGBT symbols, said Fausto.

A spokesperson for the Irving School District declined to identify the teachers who were escorted off campus and said that the district “does not comment on employee-related matters.”

We will continue to follow this story and bring you developments as they arise.

Article by: Paul Goldberg, Staff Writer

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