Kentucky is facing a teacher shortage. Classrooms across the state are understaffed, students are going without qualified educators, and school districts are struggling to recruit and retain the teachers they need. In the middle of that crisis, a state senator is trying to strip teaching licenses from educators based on a medical manual that has been out of date since before most of their students were born.

Senate Bill 351, and the floor amendment that followed it, would require doctors in Kentucky to diagnose teachers using the DSM III, a psychiatric manual published in 1980 that has since been replaced twice. The current standard, the DSM 5, does not classify being transgender as a disorder. The DSM III did. That is not a coincidence. This legislation is not about protecting students. It is about using the language of medicine to push qualified educators out of Kentucky's classrooms.

Good teachers are not defined by their gender identity. They are defined by their ability to show up every day, connect with students, and do one of the hardest and most important jobs in our society. Targeting licensed, qualified educators over who they are rather than how they perform in the classroom does not make Kentucky's schools safer. It makes them worse. Every teacher driven out by legislation like this is a classroom that becomes harder to staff and a student whose education suffers.

There is also a broader harm here that cannot be ignored. LGBTQ students are already more likely to feel unsafe and unseen at school. When their state sends the message that teachers who share their identity are unfit to educate, it does not just affect the teachers. It tells those students that they do not belong either.

Public policy must be grounded in current, accepted medical and scientific standards, not in decades-old textbooks selectively revived to justify discrimination. Kentucky's teachers and students deserve better.

Sign this petition to call on Kentucky lawmakers to reject any legislation that uses outdated psychiatric standards to target teachers and to commit to building a school system where every qualified educator and every student is welcome.