A Cobb County Georgia elementary school teacher was terminated by the school’s school board for reading a book centered on gender identity to her fifth-grade students. The book feature[d] a nonbinary character and challenge[d] the concept that there are only two genders. Such books are barred from elementary school instruction under Georgia’s Divisive Concepts Law that prohibits teachers from using controversial topics in their instruction. The school district also argued that the teacher, with her reading, violated three district policies.
The firing came after an investigative three-person tribunal had sided with the teacher, recommending that she keep her job. Of course, the teacher and her lawyer are crying politics over the firing. The lawyer, Craig Goodmark:
The board came in, and in an act of what can only be construed an act of politics over policy fired [the teacher].
Oh, wait. Even with recommending her retention,
the tribunal decided that she violated just two of the three policies the district says she broke.
Well, that’s all right, then. Two violations are OK; we’ll think about three violations.
No, it seems to this poor, dumb Texan that it was the tribunal that’s playing politics.