Taylor Lifka virtually displayed posters of a rainbow flag, “Black Lives Matter” and Spanish phrases before complaints forced the school to place her on leave, ABC 13 in Houston reported.
What We Know:
- Lifka is an English teacher at Roma High School in Texas who published a screenshot of her classroom on social media contained her diverse array of posters. She also asked her students to write their names and preferred pronouns in a chat box. She was asked to remove the signs and, after her refusal, was placed on leave.
- “My assistant principal told me, ‘Please take the posters down.’ I guess once that happened, I knew that it might be a rocky road, but considering being put on leave? I never really thought that that was going to be their first step,” Lifka recalls. School officials said that several parents and members of the community complained about the BLM and LGBTQ posters.
- The school said she would be allowed to return to work for the first day of classes Tuesday and would be allowed to keep her posters as long as they did “not come to overly disrupt or detract from the educational process or the learning environment”. The Roma Independent School District said Wednesday that the decision to place Ms. Lifka on leave was not meant as a punishment but as a need to review the situation.
- Lifka, however, said she will not return to the classroom until the district makes efforts to change “anti-racist policies” and support “tolerance in our classrooms”. “If I just reenter the classroom without any further discussion or action of how is this going to change in our community, then what was all this for?” Lifka added.
- Lifka believes the issue started as a result of her screenshot of the virtual classroom being placed in a pro-Trump Facebook group. A now-deleted Facebook post from Marian Knowlton, a Republican running for the District 31 state House seat, targeted Lifka’s photo as “radicalizing” students and described it as “leftist indoctrination”.
- Lifka has since seen support from thousands of Roma High School and community members, including the school’s student council that shamed the decision as “unjust,” adding that standing against racism and homophobia is not a political statement.
Lifka was inspired by her student’s stances, reminding everyone to never “doubt that your voice matters because there is power in the people, and there is the power to your voice and what you have to say”.
