It won't be on the school supply list this year, but thanks to state Republican leadership, Iowa school children have been saddled with a host of civil liberties violations. Since the Iowa Legislature passed the “education bill,” SF496, LGBTQ+ youth are being denied access to age-appropriate health information, representations of themselves and their families in school libraries and course curricula, and deprived of meaningful connections with trusted teachers and staff who are silenced by hostile lawmakers.
You'd better double up on that with a side of ranch, kids, this is going to leave more than a bad taste in your mouth.
This bill is clearly targeted at erasing LGBTQ+ families and people by banning any program, curriculum, test, survey, questionnaire, promotion, or instruction of sexual orientation and gender identity in K-6 classrooms. This means educators are prohibited from including books with characters or families that look like ours, teaching landmark LGBTQ+ moments in our American history (i.e., marriage equality, dismantling ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’), or revealing the full identities of historical figures, (i.e. Bayard Rustin, Sally Ride) not to mention the civil rights violations of the teachers and staff now prohibited from bringing their full and authentic selves into the classroom. The erasure of our diversity diminishes us all.
Leave it to the Legislature to release a bill targeted at education and then not issue binding and detailed guidelines ready in time for the beginning of the school year. Intentional? We think so. If you want to create the most harm, write something vague and leave the interpretation to school districts and their lawyers. This means in some school districts, teachers and staff are being told that they cannot discuss the concept of consent in their classrooms, because it might prompt questions about sex. Teachers and staff are being warned against “teaching or promoting” gender identity, so they must remove flags, buttons, T-shirts, and signs from their classrooms. And if silencing educators wasn’t enough, the Legislature is directly targeting youth; SF482 prohibits people from using bathrooms that do not match their sex assigned at birth.
These are direct violations of the Iowa Civil Rights Act, which lists sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity as protected classes. The result is an enforcement of discriminatory practices, the likes we haven’t seen in more than a generation of Iowans.
If this is how the Legislature treats those that they have sworn to protect, then it is incumbent upon us as citizens to not only stand up and vote them out of office, but find ways to become a safer harbor for our youth and let teachers and staff know we trust them to do the same when our children are in their hands. What can you do? Write letters to your legislators, ask your school district superintendents and board members to write the Iowa Department of Education demanding clear guidelines for SF482, affirm the bravery of children who boldly dare to be themselves, stock little free lending libraries with books about the people in our community and in our history- all of them. All of us.
So, we are living in, at best, a state that willingly discriminates against its own people. It’s own children. A state that emboldens bullies to watch who uses the bathroom. A state that once was number one in the country for education is now focused on a clear race to the bottom when it comes to trusting teachers. Despite Gov. Kim Reynolds’ efforts to defund and dismantle education, it doesn’t take much smarts to figure out this math problem: discrimination + education = A backward state.
Quanda C Hood is president of Better Way Forward and Parent CCASD. V Fixmer-Oraiz, is a Johnson County supervisor.
www.thegazette.com
You'd better double up on that with a side of ranch, kids, this is going to leave more than a bad taste in your mouth.
This bill is clearly targeted at erasing LGBTQ+ families and people by banning any program, curriculum, test, survey, questionnaire, promotion, or instruction of sexual orientation and gender identity in K-6 classrooms. This means educators are prohibited from including books with characters or families that look like ours, teaching landmark LGBTQ+ moments in our American history (i.e., marriage equality, dismantling ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’), or revealing the full identities of historical figures, (i.e. Bayard Rustin, Sally Ride) not to mention the civil rights violations of the teachers and staff now prohibited from bringing their full and authentic selves into the classroom. The erasure of our diversity diminishes us all.
Leave it to the Legislature to release a bill targeted at education and then not issue binding and detailed guidelines ready in time for the beginning of the school year. Intentional? We think so. If you want to create the most harm, write something vague and leave the interpretation to school districts and their lawyers. This means in some school districts, teachers and staff are being told that they cannot discuss the concept of consent in their classrooms, because it might prompt questions about sex. Teachers and staff are being warned against “teaching or promoting” gender identity, so they must remove flags, buttons, T-shirts, and signs from their classrooms. And if silencing educators wasn’t enough, the Legislature is directly targeting youth; SF482 prohibits people from using bathrooms that do not match their sex assigned at birth.
These are direct violations of the Iowa Civil Rights Act, which lists sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity as protected classes. The result is an enforcement of discriminatory practices, the likes we haven’t seen in more than a generation of Iowans.
If this is how the Legislature treats those that they have sworn to protect, then it is incumbent upon us as citizens to not only stand up and vote them out of office, but find ways to become a safer harbor for our youth and let teachers and staff know we trust them to do the same when our children are in their hands. What can you do? Write letters to your legislators, ask your school district superintendents and board members to write the Iowa Department of Education demanding clear guidelines for SF482, affirm the bravery of children who boldly dare to be themselves, stock little free lending libraries with books about the people in our community and in our history- all of them. All of us.
So, we are living in, at best, a state that willingly discriminates against its own people. It’s own children. A state that emboldens bullies to watch who uses the bathroom. A state that once was number one in the country for education is now focused on a clear race to the bottom when it comes to trusting teachers. Despite Gov. Kim Reynolds’ efforts to defund and dismantle education, it doesn’t take much smarts to figure out this math problem: discrimination + education = A backward state.
Quanda C Hood is president of Better Way Forward and Parent CCASD. V Fixmer-Oraiz, is a Johnson County supervisor.
Opinion: Back to school in a backward state
These are direct violations of the Iowa Civil Rights Act, which lists sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity as protected classes.
www.thegazette.com
