The Georgia Association of Educators and two other teachers sued Cobb County School officials on Tuesday because of two bills that limit teachers’ speech and what they can teach in the classroom. It says that these “vague laws pose a continuing threat to other teachers in the school district … and harm Cobb County students’ ability to learn in safe and inclusive classrooms.”
The Protecting Students First Act is the first bill. It says that teachers can’t “espouse personal political beliefs concerning divisive concepts.” These ideas were written down and included things like race, unconscious bias, racial advantage, and the part racism has played in American history.
The second bill is called the Parents’ Bill of Rights. It says that “all parent’s rights are reserved to the parent of a minor child in this state without obstruction or interference from a state or local government entity.” It went on to say that this included “the right to direct the [child’s] upbringing and the moral or religious training.”
The bills were signed by Governor Brian Kemp, who said, “We put students and parents first by keeping woke politics out of the classroom and off our ballfields.” But teachers are pushing back, saying that these rules make it almost impossible to teach.
Katherine Rinderle is a teacher who is suing because she says she was fired for reading “My Shadow Is Purple” in class. “My students had voted on which book they wanted to read that day, and they had voted twice to choose ‘My Shadow Is Purple,” explained Rinderle. “Students had engaged in discussion about what they gathered from the book and the message they received.”
She said that the parent’s complaint about the book and the fact that their child read it in school was what got her fired.
Another argument is that the rules aren’t clear and the things they cover aren’t all the same. The people who filed the lawsuit said that the managers couldn’t explain what “controversial, sensitive, or divisive” meant in their Censorship Policies. It was also said that many teachers didn’t know what topics weren’t allowed to be talked about in class.
