Albano couldn’t say how much the district paid for the books.ĭuring the summer of 2018, Welcoming Schools trained 10 Broward teachers to become “Welcoming Schools Facilitators” who offer the program’s “professional development” across the district’s schools, but none of the schools showed interest, according to Jared Todd, a spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign. The program recommends books as part of its trainings, but it does not require them. The district paid an outside vendor for the program and ended it due to the cost, Albano said. ![]() It’s a program run by the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ advocacy organization, that offers training to teachers “to gain critical skills for creating LGBTQ+ and gender inclusive schools,” according to its website. The school district said the books it gave to Stonewall were not in schools, but “left over from a grant that ended years ago” and a giveaway as part of the district’s 21st Century summer program, a state-funded program that offers academic help and extracurricular activities to students.Īccording to Albano, the books had been sitting on the shelves “for years” - some five or more - originally purchased for an initiative the district ran called Welcoming Schools. The department is in charge of districtwide instruction and initiatives surrounding diversity, mental health, wellness and behavior. But Tom Albano, a spokesperson for the district’s Diversity & School Climate Department, said the number was 100. Kesten said the museum received about 500 books. “The books were donated to make room for new departments being added to the physical office space due to the District reorganization.” In Broward, the books donated to the museum “came from our Diversity & School Climate Department, that recently relocated its office space, not from school media centers,” said Keyla Concepción, a spokesperson for the school district. ![]() Some educators have worried that any discussion about LGBTQ issues could be off limits, while state leaders have said the law doesn’t attack the LGBTQ community. In recent weeks, school districts across the state have started readying for a new school year while figuring out what to do to comply with the new law. ![]() “We have worked so hard to be an inclusive school district for all children, and this bill is going to make it more difficult for children.” “I’m concerned about what the unintended consequences are going to be,” Broward Superintendent Vickie Cartwright said in an interview earlier this year. When the Parental Rights in Education measure was being considered as a bill, the Broward School District and several other school districts in Florida pledged support for LGBTQ students and families, and raised concerns about the new law’s impact. The law is based on the idea that parents should have the final say about their children, instead of schools. “It is all too easy to promulgate the hate and divisions we, as a country, are experiencing for political gain.”įlorida has been in the spotlight this year for the controversial new law, one of several new measures in Florida oriented around guiding what students should and shouldn’t learn in schools. The museum, which is one of the largest LGBTQ archives in the United States, published a statement a day later, decrying the banning of such books in schools. Stonewall Museum recently received a donation of LGBTQ-themed books from Broward School District. Robert Kesten, executive director of the Stonewall Museum on Tuesday, July 5, 2022, is seen with some of the books donated recently. “It is invaluable to learn acceptance and understanding.” “The books ‘donated’ to Stonewall were written for children to teach them about people in their classroom, in their neighborhoods, and in their families,” the Stonewall Museum said in a news release. The law bans instruction on gender identity and sexual orientation for students from kindergarten to third grade, or instruction that isn’t “age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students.” The school district says it donated the books to clear office space and make room for new departments as part of a district reorganization.īut the Stonewall National Museum and Archives in Fort Lauderdale, which received the donated books, questions whether the timing had more to do with the law that went into effect July 1. Broward County Public Schools donated boxes full of LGBTQ-oriented children’s books to a museum this summer - just weeks before Florida’s new Parental Rights in Education law, known to critics as “don’t say gay,” took effect.
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