Back to school in America: 8 new crackdowns on students, teachers and academic freedom

A Norman, Oklahoma teacher resigned this week after being reprimanded for sharing a QR code with her students linking to the Brooklyn Public Library's Books Unbanned site, which provides digital and audio access to censored books, after covering up the shelved books in her class upon guidance from the district which warned against exposing students to unauthorized literature. 

 

"For the 2nd year in a row, students at Norman High will be without a certified English teacher for a substantial amount of time," the English teacher told Vice. "The fault for that lies with Governor Stitt and Republican state leadership."

This comes as the state's new anti-CRT laws have already resulted in Tulsa Public Schools—the state's second-largest district—and Mustang School District seeing their accreditation downgraded. "The evidence," free speech advocacy group PEN America argues, "underscores that neither school district actually violated the requirements of HB 1775."

 

 

In Kansas, a music teacher was fired after the Catholic school she works at found out that she led a rally in support of abortion rights ahead of this month's special election. On Aug. 2, Kansan voters roundly defeated 59% to 41% a constitutional amendment to allow the Kansas legislature to ban abortion rights.

 

"My politics outside school is not their business," the music teacher told local reporters. "I think this is what they want. We're seeing so many conservative attacks on teachers."

Texas reporter Steven Monacelli explained that after four conservative members on the Grapevine-Colleyville Independent school board voted on Monday to pass a series of new policies, 72 hours after they were publicly released, over a hundred students at ​​the North Texas Grapevine High School walked out of classes Friday in protest of the new restrictions like the so-called don't say Trans policy which prohibits teachers from addressing students by their chosen pronouns. 

 

 

The district's new rules follow Republican Gov. Greg Abbott's February directive to the Texas Department of Family Protective and Services to investigate parents who provide their transgender children with gender-affirming care.

A Nebraska school board closed a 54-year-old high school newspaper after students ran an editorial criticizing Florida's don't say gay law. Students on staff say they were also reprimanded in April after publishing preferred pronouns and names in bylines and articles.

 

One school board member complained of the paper's PRIDE edition that "there were editorials that were essentially, I guess what I would say, LGBTQ."

The Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported this week that hundreds of dictionaries are gathering dust after district officials declined a Rotary Club's donation for fear it would violate Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis' new law cracking down on "indoctrination" in schools. The club has donated more than 4,000 dictionaries to Sarasota elementary schools for nearly 15 consecutive years. The newly passed law, however, requires all reading material in schools — regardless of whether it is purchased or donated — to be "selected" by a certified education media specialist. The district doesn't currently have any working in its schools, so the dictionaires are collecting dust as the school year starts. 

After Florida's Republican governor saw massive success with his endorsed school board candidates in Tuesday's elections, Ron DeSantis ended the week by suspending four school board members, all Democrats, in liberal. Broward County. DeSantis appointed four Republicans to replace the suspended board members. 

 

"What Governor DeSantis did is un-American and undemocratic. He doesn't care about democracy and he overturned the will of the voters," the school board's ousted chairwoman complained. "What country is this?"

Teachers in Colombus, Ohio spent the first week of school on strike for the first time in decades. While students are expected to return to classes on Monday, one of the central issues causing the strike was a yearslong battle to get classrooms outfitted with air conditioning. Experts have found that children "are more susceptible to heat-induced illness than adults" and require special protections from high temperatures.