A school board in Wisconsin has decided to buck the ‘woke’ culture trend with a new decision regarding “political messaging.”
Last week, the Kettle Moraine School Board voted in favor of keeping in place a policy that the school superintendent has interpreted as banning gay pride flags and Black Lives Matter (BLM) flags from classrooms because they have been deemed as having political and/or religious overtones, Fox6 reported.
“Teachers and administration will not have political flags or religious messaging in their classroom or on their person,” Superintendent Stephen Plum said ahead of the vote.
In addition to the gay pride and BLM flags, other flags and displays including “We Back the Badge” — a pro-police message — are banned under the policy as well. Just one school board member voted against banning the flags after he said he discussed the issue with staff and students.
In addition, the board’s policy bars teachers from including their preferred pronouns in communications and emails.
Fox News adds:
Plum told the school board that the district’s interpretation of the policy — which prohibits staffers from using their positions to promote partisan politics, religious views and propaganda for personal, monetary or nonmonetary gain — changed following a legal analysis.
The vote was held in a packed room last week as students and community members sounded off on the measure.
“I am not controversial. I am not political. I am a person,” one student told the board, the local outlet reported.
“The fact is, the majority of students don’t want or need this, so catering to the minority only encourages the envelope to be pushed further,” another student offered.
Before the vote, a pair of high school students in the district launched a petition at Change.org which called for reversing the ban. As of this writing, Fox News reported, more than 13,000 people had signed it after it launched last month.
Meanwhile, the American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin blasted the vote and said the organization is now investigating the policy with an eye toward future litigation if the group deems the policy to be illegal.
“If you have a policy that says ‘nothing political,’ does that mean you can’t have a sign up that says, ‘Support our Troops’ or ‘Believe Women’ or ‘Save the Planet?’ By some people’s definitions, all of those things are political,” Christine Donahoe, an attorney with the ACLU of Wisconsin told the local outlet.
“It really looks like targeted attacks at specific viewpoints, like LGBT communities, or welcome and safe spaces to students of color,” Donahoe claimed.
