At least 200 students from Grants Pass High School walked out and joined parents and community supporters last Tuesday to protest a recent school board decision to reinstate a teacher and an administrator behind the benign sounding “I, resolve” campaign. The educators continue to work to undermine a new law that calls on Oregon’s educators to support queer and gender non-conforming students.
In response, students formed the powerful I, Affirm coalition.
“We are a group of local students, community members, parents, educators, and advocates, including the Rogue Action Center, who are working together to see that our local schools follow through on their commitments to make schools safe, welcoming, and affirming for all students.”
The transphobic educators, North Middle School Assistant Principal Rachel Damiano and science teacher Katie Medart, were fired in July for promoting the transphobic campaign during work hours. They then sued District 7’s School Board and pressured school board members to reinstate them amid claims of first amendment rights violations. The events transpired after Oregon’s legislature passed Senate Bill 52, the “LGBTQ2SIA+ Student Success Plan.”
According to Basic Rights Oregon, the new law calls on the Oregon Department of Education to “create and implement an educational plan for queer students – whether they identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender/non-binary, queer/questioning, two-spirit, intersex, asexual or otherwise – in our state.”
After the students walked out and had convened for a peaceful rally, adult provocateurs under the banner “Salt Shakers” arrived and verbally harassed students and community supporters, inciting tension and arguments. Grants Pass police, present at the scene and informed about the walk out, cited two students and arrested one young adult for “interfering in police activity.”
According to a national survey conducted by GLSEN, nearly 99 percent of LGBTQ students have heard homophobic words at school, and almost 92 percent felt distressed by this language. In Oregon, according to the I Affirm Coalition, “LGBTQ students endure bullying and harassment twice as often as their peers and are three times as likely to miss school because they were afraid for their safety at school.”
District 7 has an Educational Equity policy that many feel the educators violate through the promotion of their anti-trans beliefs that gender identity must be defined along anatomical lines and that mandates for use of preferred pronouns and names causes inconveniences for teachers.
Elizabeth Bretko, a Grants Pass business owner and mother to a North Middle School student said District 7 did not not notify parents about the controversy – or potential harm to the students – including that an administrator at her daughter’s school would be reinstated to pursue her oppressive beliefs against trans and gender non-conforming students.
“There’s been trans people around for hundreds of years, at least,” said Bretko. “The fact that we haven’t figured out how to be in the locker room with them in 2021 is on us. We need to figure it out”
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