Florida’s new Parental Rights in Education law takes effect on Friday, and left-wingers rap Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis for teachers calling an early end to Pride Month.
The impetus for the anti-DeSantis rant was a report by WFTV in Orlando, which found that Orange County teachers had “sounded alarm bells Monday after word spread from principals that Orange County Public Schools would impose strict restrictions on classroom behavior” in response to the law.
Representatives of the County’s Teacher Association, a local union, told WFTV that teachers and staff members “will be disallowed from wearing rainbow articles of clothing, including lanyards distributed by the district last year. Elementary-level teachers reported being discouraged from putting pictures of their same-sex spouse on their desk or talking about them to students.”
In addition, “Safe Space” stickers allegedly for LGBTQ students “may have to be removed from doors, teachers will have to report to parents if a student ‘comes out’ to them and they must use pronouns assigned at birth, regardless of what the parents allow,” the CTA claimed.
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The reaction was to the Parental Rights in Education law, which bans school districts and classroom teachers from implementing lesson plans based on sexual orientation or gender identity in grades K-3.
Critics mislabeled it the “Don’t Say Gay” law, apparently to the point that they themselves believed they cannot “say gay.”
DeSantis, of course, is to blame, according to liberals. One of them was Chasten Buttigieg, spouse of U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who once famously led kids at a summer camp in a recitation of the pledge of allegiance to the Pride flag.
“Now districts might remove family pictures, rainbow lanyards, and ‘safe space’ stickers out of fear,” Buttigieg tweeted. “Maybe DeSantis should focus on making sure kids aren’t slaughtered in school instead of ensuring they don’t see a picture of a happy family.”
Buttigieg, of course, who does not live in Florida, was not asked why it is appropriate for teachers to instruct the state’s youngest students in gender ideology.
Nonetheless, he, and others like him, missed the point entirely.
Teachers were removing these objects because of the school district, not the governor.
As WFTV reported, “Some of the measures [taken by teachers] appeared to be far outside what the law actually forbids, as it focuses primarily on mental health monitoring and classroom curriculums.”
“It will be alarming if our district chooses to interpret this law in the most extreme way,” CTA President-elect Clinton McCracken told WFTV. In other words, again, it’s the district, and not DeSantis, driving this.
A spokesman for the school district told WFTV that the teachers reacted – or overreacted – to “hypothetical scenarios” offered by administrators. The state Education Department has not even announced what it expects under the new law.
But why let facts get in the way of a good, if wrong and misguided, DeSantis bashing.
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