December 19, 2019 |
NEWS | QSALTLAKE MAGAZINE | 11
ISSUE 307 | Qsaltlake.com
‘Welcoming Schools’ Anti-Bullying Program Heats Up Park City In recent months, one Park City elementary school has sparked conflict among Parkites regarding the school’s induction of the Human Rights Campaign’s Welcoming Schools initiative. Welcoming Schools identifies itself as a training tool for elementary school educators focusing on embracing family diversity, creating LGBTQ- and gender-inclusive schools and preventing bias-based bullying. Utah State Board of Education equity and advocacy specialist Holly Bell travels to schools around the state and helps districts implement anti-bullying training newly required by state law and helps teachers promote equity. “My role here is to provide techni-
cal assistance to schools. If I’m able to provide training to help equity, I do,” Bell said in an interview with the Park Record. “Teachers are getting these questions and they don’t know how to answer. (These trainings are) giving them some tools so they know how to answer things that come into their schools.” Yet, when Carolyn Synan, the principal of Trailside Elementary, invited Bell to her school, a group of parents with children enrolled there anonymously sent an email calling it “an LGBTQ indoctrination program and sex education [program]”. Shortly after this, a ceaseand-desist letter from the Pacific Justice Institute, a legal defense organization
Utah County teacher fired for berating 5th grade student thankful for his adoptive gay dads A substitute teacher at Deerfield Elementary School in Cedar Hills, Utah was fired after telling a fifth-grader who is soon to be adopted by two dads that being gay is “a sin.” In a lesson the week before Thanksgiving, the unnamed sub had asked the students what they were thankful for. The 11-year-old boy said he was thankful for “finally being adopted by [his] two dads.” “… I got choked up when he said it — he is thankful that he is finally being adopted by his two dads,” said Dancing with the Stars dancer Louis van Amstel in a video on social media. But then the teacher began berating the boy, and in front of van Amstel by saying to the boy, “Why on Earth would you be happy about that?” and said, “That’s nothing to be thankful for.” She also told the class “homosexuality is wrong” and “two men living together is a sin,” The Salt Lake Tribune reported. The boy didn’t even want to speak up and get the teacher in trouble, but three classmates did, van Amstel said. The three girls reportedly tried to get her to stop berating him, and when she wouldn’t, they left the room to tell the principal. The teacher was then reportedly escorted out of the school while still arguing her point, and subsequently fired from Kelly
Services Staffing. Louis and Joshua, the school and the Alpine school district all express their gratitude to the students who followed their conscience and worked to end the substitute’s tirade. A few days after the incident, the family’s neighbors decorated their house with paper hearts that said, “We love you” and “We support you.” Louis and Joshua were in married in 2017, in Sundance, Utah. Louis just finished a season as a judge of the Dutch version of Dancing with the Stars. Q
specializing in the defense of religious freedom, parental rights, and other civil liberties, was delivered to Synan and to the Park City Superintendent. The cease-and-desist letter made two demands: that the district stop the implementation of Welcoming Schools and that the district remove all Welcoming Schools materials from district buildings, including posters and books. “We initially reject many of the factual and legal assertions set forth in your letter and believe that you are misinformed about the nature of the Welcoming Schools program,” the district’s legal counsel Joan Andrews wrote in an initial letter Oct. 17. In a second letter 12 days later, she added, “should you follow through with your threat of litigation, the District is fully prepared to defend its actions to-date.” Q
