Petition from the Students and Parents of Auburn High Regarding the Flying of the Pride Flag on School Grounds
Dear Dr. Pignato,
The following signers of this petition ask that the Pride Flag flown in Mrs. Yeager’s classroom be removed as we strongly feel that it creates a hostile and provocative learning environment for students not comfortable to openly supporting the LGBTQ+ community in a public school where students come from diverse political and religious backgrounds. Furthermore, we believe it is unprofessional and distracting for a teacher to be so openly displaying their political views in an unbiased and socially neutral public setting. While the signers of this petition do not feel it is an issue for Mrs. Yeager to support the LGBTQ+ community, we do feel it creates a less than ideal learning environment when a teacher subjects their students to their personal political views in a public school system.
The signers of this petition feel that the flying of the Pride Flag can create a hostile and uncomfortable learning environment for students who come from families that do not support the LGBTQ+ community. Auburn City Schools clearly promotes quality of education and empowerment of the individual to reach his or her full potential. However, subjecting or explicitly exposing students from diverse political backgrounds to political views differing from theirs can make students uncomfortable and distract them from learning the material assigned to them, preventing them from reaching their full potential.
In addition, we would argue that it is unprofessional for a teacher to so openly express and subject students to his or her personal political views. Seeing as how it is Auburn City Schools mission to educate students to their furthest potential, we feel like an expression of such polarizing views is a detriment to the overall learning environment of that class as it alienates students with differing political viewpoints. We also feel it is inappropriate for a public school system to allow teachers to explicitly express clearly biased political viewpoints in a supposedly unbiased and politically neutral school system. We feel that an expression of these views only drives a wedge between students with differing view points and can alienate students with unpopular political and/or religious views from the popular majority in the class, further deteriorating the classroom and learning environment.
In closing, the signers of this petition would like for you to consider the uproar and chaos that would ensue were a teacher to hang for example a Confederate, Christian, or Heterosexual Flag in their classroom. There would likely be protests, emails from teachers, and threatening of lawsuits from parents with differing viewpoints. As such, one does not see teachers hanging these flags in classrooms due to the same argument that it is unprofessional and can create a hostile and unideal learning environment. Taking this and our before mentioned reasons into consideration, the signers of this petition ask that the Pride Flag be removed from Auburn High School in order to preserve a welcoming, beneficial, and unbiased learning environment for students from all political backgrounds attending Auburn High School.