All posts tagged "Schoolboards"

COCONUT CREEK, Fla. — When Daisy was 10, she stood in front of a microphone in a green dress, her long hair pulled back in a purple headband. “Living in Broward County has given me the sense of safety,” she said to the Broward County School Board members, who were honoring LGBTQ History Month, “knowing that the school board has my back.” Daisy, a transgender girl, seemed to be growing up in an era of unprecedented acceptance. That was 2017, two years before Gov. Ron DeSantis would take office. In a short time, she crossed a cultural chasm. Schools in Florida — and even Broward, the most Democr......

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California Attorney General Rob Bonta is opening a civil rights investigation into the Chino Valley Unified School District after it adopted a controversial policy that requires the school to notify parents if their child is transgender. The “Parental Notification Policy” requires teachers and school staff to inform parents if a student requests to use different pronouns or a different name than that on official records, or if the student uses bathrooms or joins programs that do not align with their sex assigned at birth. It also requires parents to be notified if their ch......

A Wisconsin teacher who complained about the banning of the Miley Cyrus and Dolly Parton song “Rainbowland” has now been fired. In a unanimous decision, the Waukesha School Board on Wednesday night voted to fire first-grade teacher Melissa Tempel, four months after she criticized Heyer Elementary School’s decision to prohibit her students from singing a pro-LGBTQ song in a school concert. Earlier this year, Tempel took to Twitter to express frustration at school administrators who banned the 2017 pop-country track, which was once described by Parton as a song about “dreaming and hoping that we......

Most Illinois public school districts that tested sinks and fountains for tiny traces of brain-damaging lead as required by a 2017 state law had to tell parents they found the toxic metal quietly lurking in the children’s drinking water. According to a Tribune analysis of state data, more than 1,800 of the roughly 2,100 public schools that submitted test results identified some amount of lead in their drinking water. That includes more than 1,350 schools where at least one water sample had lead levels exceeding 5 parts per billion, the threshold where parental notification is required. But des......

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — The sun shone over the striped awnings of the Historic Capitol. Visitors lined up at the metal detectors across the plaza in the concrete tower that is Florida’s current Capitol. Lobbyists streamed in like ants to sugar. It was the final day of the legislative session, their pay day. Four floors up in the Senate chamber, lawmakers debated the $117 billion budget. Across the rotunda, someone streamed a playlist of pop songs into the House chamber, where members were starting to gather. “Just a small town girl,’’ blasted as Rep. Josie Tomkow, a Republican, posed for pictures ......

All of Florida’s public school teachers are effectively banned from providing classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity, the State Board of Education decided Wednesday. The board unanimously voted for a rule that expands through 12th grade the state’s controversial 2022 Parental Rights in Education law. Critics dubbed the law “don’t say gay,” arguing it wrongly silences all mentions of LGBTQ people in school and unfairly suggests teachers were acting inappropriately. The newly amended rule, approved at the board’s meeting in Tallahassee, says teachers in grades 4 to 12 “sh......