Miami Dade school board rejects LGBTQ history month over fears it violates 'Don't Say Gay'

[brooklynite]

Source: Politico

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — The Miami Dade School Board on Wednesday night struck down a proposal that would have recognized October as “LGBTQ history month” out of concern that it would violate the state’s Parental Rights in Education law, known by opponents as “Don’t Say Gay.”

Miami school board members passed a similar resolution acknowledging LGBTQ history month in 2021 by a 7-1 vote but found themselves in a different situation this fall under the Parental Rights in Education law. The Republican-led Legislature approved the law in March and it continues to affect how Florida schools address issues of sexual orientation and gender identity.

Although the board’s own attorney said the recognition was on a solid legal footing, board members voted 1-8 against the idea after dozens of parents and community members raised their opposition at a marathon meeting.

“I do believe this is in direct violation of our parental rights bill,” said board member Christi Fraga, who voted against the measure. “If not so directly, in spirit, it is. Because this is saying a full endorsement in the entire district of this month — that includes kindergarten through 12th grade.”

Read more: https://www.politico.com/news/2022/09/07/miami-dade-school-board-spars-over-lgbtq-history-month-recognition-00055368

[Marcus IM]

1. I listened the entire meeting.

I posted about it last night ...

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217133388

[IngridsLittleAngel]

2. Awaiting the mighty free speech advocates in 3... 2... 1....

Wait... Not the kind of free speech they care about. Nevermind...

[obamanut2012]

3. Seriously

[Lonestarblue]

4. It's as if Republicans think it's fun to persecute children.

Something even more insidious is going on in schools. They have installed tracking software on school-issued laptops that generates reports of all student searches and social media posts for topics like sexuality, which teachers and administrators can then use to out LGBTQ kids. In Texas, such tracking can be used to sic Child Welfare agents on the parents of trans kids, which the governor has now determined is child abuse and saying that kids can be removed from the home.

“For years, schools across the US have used digital surveillance tools that collect information about youth sexuality – intimate details that are gleaned from students’ conversations with friends, diary entries and search histories. Also, student information collected by surveillance companies is regularly shared with police, according to a recent survey conducted by the non-profit Center for Democracy and Technology. These two realities are concerning to Elizabeth Laird, the center’s director of equity in civic technology. After the supreme court’s repeal of Roe v Wade in June, she said information about youth sexuality could be weaponized.

“Right now – without doing anything – schools may be getting alerts about students” who are searching the internet for resources related to reproductive health, Laird said. “If you are in a state that has a law that criminalizes abortion, right now this tool could be used to enforce those laws.”

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2022/sep/08/abortion-bans-school-surveillance-lgbtq-restrictions

I suppose the next step Republicans will take is to arrest pregnant teens to keep them from having an abortion. We need laws limiting what data schools can collect on students. This software is a huge invasion of privacy.

[NullTuples]

5. Power over others makes them feel good. The bigger the power differential the better.

[sakabatou]

6. Don't those kinds of trackers an invasion of privacy?

[Lonestarblue]

7. I think so, but I suspect many parents don't know the extent of the tracking.

Most of the reports generated are from monitoring of students during their personal time, not during school hours. This is nothing less than institutional spying, and it has a greater impact on poorer students because they are less likely to have personal laptops than students in better off families. Minority children are already disciplined more often than their white peers, and this surveillance likely affects them more also.

“After evaluating flagged content, vendors report any concerns to school officials, who take disciplinary actions on a case-by-case basis. The lack of oversight in schools’ use of these tools could lead to further harm for minority students.

The situation is worsened by the fact that Black and Hispanic students rely more on school devices than their white peers do. This in turn makes minority students more likely to be monitored and exposes them to greater risk of some sort of intervention.”

https://www.the74million.org/article/school-surveillance-of-students-via-laptops-may-do-more-harm-than-good/


The potential harm to students is great, as they know that they are being spied on in everything they do. Some might say that the computer is school property and students have no right to use it for social media or any non-school purpose. Then the computers should be left at school at the end of the day, and the spying should stop.

[SWBTATTReg]

8. If they are concerned about this particular word, just use another word instead, and say, e.g.,

don't say 'funny' or something else. Not breaking the rules and still getting the point across. desantis is a bigot.