Meeting discusses Pride flags in school
A Stoughton High School senior suspended a half-day last week for displaying an LGBTQ+ Pride flag defended her actions Tuesday night before the town’s School Committee, while other speakers pushed back against her suggestion that Pride and Black Lives Matter flags should be allowed in classrooms.
“These flags do not discriminate against anyone. They do not hurt anyone. So why are they controversial?” Olivia Tran asked the panel, according to a video of her speech. “If you choose to hang them, you choose love.”
Tran was disciplined after she walked out of class to support three teachers who she said were recently given a written warning to stop displaying Pride flags in classrooms in violation of a policy prohibiting the display of any “political” items, including Pride, Black Lives Matter, or Thin Blue Line signs.
The policy’s goal was to create “neutral learning environments,” Superintendent Thomas Raab said previously.
Raab, School Committee Chairwoman Sandra Groppi, and Stoughton High Principal Juliette Miller did not immediately respond to requests for comment Tuesday night.
In a letter to the district last week, Raab explained that the directive came from him, not the School Committee, and his decision was not motivated by politics. He said to maintain consistency, he could not allow any specific type of flag or poster without allowing others.
School and district leaders delivered the directive during a September faculty meeting. After teachers raised concerns, Miller told faculty in an e-mail the next day that the district was trying to keep the school inclusive for everyone.
Some teachers at the high school kept their Pride flags up, however. At least three received written warnings from the principal stating that they were “insubordinate” for refusing to comply with the directive and that further disciplinary actions would be taken if they did not remove the flags, according to a copy of one of the letters obtained by the Globe.
Before Tuesday night’s meeting, a crowd of chanting supporters gathered outside for a protest organized by Tran, she said in a phone interview.
“The message I want to send tonight is that the superintendent can’t silence us,” Tran said. “I told [the School Committee] that we deserve a voice and that Superintendent Raab has been ignoring it, even though he’s pretending to listen to it.”
Vernon Domingo, 72, lives in Bridgewater, but said he felt compelled to join the protest as the proud parent of a transgender son and he feels the district’s policy “sends a message of exclusion.”
“I was just taken aback,” said Domingo, a retired geography professor at Bridgewater State University, in an interview after the protest. “What it does is it makes many students — Black and brown and LGBTQ students — feel not wanted. A lot of schools have flags, and it’s just part of the decor.”
Others addressed the School Committee in support of the policy.
Rabbi Henry Morse of the Sha’ar Hashamayim Messianic Congregation in Stoughton said he believes “in conservative values that have made our country what it is.”
“We need to come back to a place of innocence like we’ve had in the past,” Morse, 64, said in an interview after the meeting. “I don’t think these things belong in our schools, and I don’t think we need to be endorsing them. I think we need to teach them — get back to the basics — reading, writing, and arithmetic.”
Jeremy C. Fox can be reached at jeremy.fox@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @ jeremycfox. Matt Yan can be reached at matt.yan@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @matt_yan12.