Idaho Middle School Tells Teacher Her 'Everyone Is Welcome' Poster Is Too Divisive
No more indoctrinating vulnerable kiddos with this 'decency and respect' ideology!
An Idaho middle school teacher has been told by her school district that she has to remove two posters with positive, affirming messages, because they supposedly violate state law and school policy too, because what if someone who objects to their embrace of equality and dignity takes offense?
Sarah Inama teaches 6th grade world civilization at Lewis and Clark Middle School in Meridian, a big suburb just west of Boise, and has had the posters in her classroom for four years without any problems, but Times Are Different Now. One cheerful poster says “Everyone is Welcome Here,” above an illustration of raised cartoony hands in various skin tones. The other carries the apparently divisive message “In this room, everyone is welcome, important, accepted, respected, encouraged, valued.” Each word in a different-colored rectangle, but not in the prismatic arrangement of a rainbow flag, so there’s one bullet dodged by the clever woke poster manufacturers.
But apparently these very civilized messages scared administrators in the West Ada School District, because on February 3, Inama was told that the posters had to go, because they “don’t allow people to express differing opinions, that it is controversial in today’s political environment.”
If you’re one of those audio-visual learners, here’s a local teevee story about the pusillanimous poster purge; I first encountered the story when this popped up on YouTube.
Inama notes in that report that she was told nobody had complained about the posters, so we guess the district was motivated by fear that some asshole would call the posters “DEI” or some other woke horror. Sure sounds like complying in advance, in hopes that Idaho-based leopards will leave West Ada Schools’ faces alone.
The West Ada district shared emails it sent to Inama with the Idaho Statesman (free with email, or here’s an archive link) in which Chief Academic Officer Marcus Myers informed Inama that the posters had to be removed. Allegedly, the posters violated the “Dignity and Nondiscrimination in Public Education Act,” Idaho’s cookie-cutter law banning divisive content, one of the many passed in the made-up rightwing panic over “critical race theory.” Oh, yes, and they also somehow violated district policy requiring that classroom posters be “content neutral and conducive to a positive learning environment,” although the email failed to explain how that rule is subverted by “you are welcome and valued here.”
Myers even pointed out that maybe the posters would violate the Idaho Lege’s recently passed anti-LGBTQ flag ban, which prohibits “flags or banners that present political, religious, or ideological views, including but not limited to political parties, race, gender, sexual orientation, or political ideologies,” which was nice of him, maybe, but that bill hasn’t actually been signed into law by Gov. Brad Little, and won’t take effect during the current school year anyway. Freaking Idaho. (Hey, won’t that ban a poster with the Ten Commandments, too?) The Statesman also cleverly notes that the email “did not explain how a sign reading “Everyone is welcome here” would be in violation of that law.”
After being ordered to remove the posters, Inama complied at first, but added that darn it, “I just couldn’t stop thinking about it. I came back in on a Saturday with my husband and my baby, and I put it back up.”
She advised her principal that the posters were back, and he scheduled a meeting with her. She’s been told to remove them by the end of the school year, or … well, that part is apparently being left hanging, but golly, she sure is an insubordinate trouble maker isn’t she?
The district appears to have offered evolving rationales about that “Everyone is welcome here” sign, too. Inama told local TV station KTVB that her higher-ups told her that “Everyone is welcome here” is “not something everybody believes,” making it a banned personal opinion, not just basic common sense in a classroom.
However, West Ada District spox Nikki Scheppers told the Statesman in an email that the words were just fine as a “general statement of being welcoming,” but that “concerns arose around the specific visual presentation of the signs in question” because of those different skin tones, you see. She did not go on, thank Crom, to insist that the darker tones were all out of proportion to the actual racial demographics of Idaho or Meridian, because West Ada is not in north Idaho and has presumably lawyered anything coming from district email accounts.
Or maybe not; the district also emailed all staff this week to explain that a school is a lot like a sportsball team, which is why mindless conformity is so important:
Every player knows that while they bring their own strengths and personality to the game, they must operate within the rules to maintain fairness and consistency,” the district said. “If one player decided to wear a different uniform, use a different-sized ball, or ignore the rules, the game would lose its structure, creating confusion and imbalance.”
Improper metaphor! Ten yard penalty!
Inama also says the worst part has been that her students are having to see that some of the adults in their lives are acting like poopyheads (that’s our paraphrase):
“It’s really sad to see young students for the first time realizing that there are even racist sentiments out there,” Inama said. “It’s just really sad to see that some of them genuinely can’t fathom why a sign like that would be an issue.”
Then again, as Idaho kids, they’d surely find that out eventually. Maybe it should be taught around sixth grade, but in a more mature classroom setting.
Happily, Inama has seen overwhelming support from the community, which is not full of tightass cowardly school administrators. A Boise human rights group — the folks who responded to the Aryan Nations compound in North Idaho decades ago by setting up an Anne Frank statue in downtown Boise — offered a message of support, and so have ordinary members of the community:
Parents, fellow teachers and former students have sent her positive messages, she said. Five people, including parents and strangers, sent her bouquets of flowers on Wednesday. She said students wore homemade bracelets and shirts containing words from her signs.
However, she also said that she had no idea who the person is who started a GoFundMe to sell shirts with the two signs, or someone else who’s just selling ‘em online at one of those Your Message Here sites.
Capitalism … finds a way, don’t it?
We wish Ms. Inama well, and hope that the school district realizes it has Striesand Effected itself right into the kind of public controversy it seems to have been trying to avoid. Grow up, you jerks. The kids are watching.
[Idaho Statesman (free with email registration; if that doesn’t work, here’s an archive link) / KTVB on YouTube /
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I wonder if they'll start coming after the librarians' and other teachers' "READ" posters with Sesame Street characters, sportsball people, and, I dunno, K-pop stars? They're very demanding, and don't allow the "DON'T LEARN, EVER" folks to express an alternate opinion.
“don’t allow people to express differing opinions,".
The opinion that NOT everyone is welcome?