ORLANDO, Fla. — The Orange County school board meeting Tuesday saw a large crowd of people express their feelings on types of events allowed on public school property in Florida. 

The recent cancellation of an after-school event called “Drag and Donuts” at Boone High School drew ire from students and parents alike, who believe the state is silencing and discouraging LGBTQ+ students from being themselves. The school canceled the event following phone calls received by the state’s Department of Education.

Boone’s principal sent a letter to parents stating the “Drag and Donuts” event was not a drag performance, but “an opportunity for the students to hear a positive message of acceptance and love” from a guest speaker.

This was the third year in a row the school’s “Gay-Straight Alliance” club held the event as part of their regular after-school meetings.

“It was an after-school event, but it was inappropriate for this venue. We’re held to a higher standard as educators,” OCPS board member Alicia Farrant previously told Spectrum News in an interview.

Florida’s new Parental Rights in Education law specifically does not prohibit extracurricular activities like Gay-Straight Alliances, according to a judge’s ruling last year. 

“The statute does not prohibit intervention against LGBTQ bullying, participation in extracurricular activities (such as “Gay-Straight Alliances” or books fairs), and even after-hours tutoring, among many other examples. That is not ‘classroom instruction’ covered by the statute,” the order reads.

Orange County mom Jen Cousins pushed for the matter to be added to the April 11 school boarding meeting agenda, however, that didn’t happen.

“If it was officially recognized and on the agenda, then everybody who has something to say about it would have the chance to speak,” Cousins said Tuesday. “Leaving it off gives us only that small, 30-minute window of public comment on non-agenda items.”

Per OCPS rules, a portion of people may sign up to speak during a “pre-agenda public input period,” which happens immediately before a school board meeting. It’s first-come, first-serve, and by 3 p.m. Tuesday, a line was already wrapping around the building.

However, not everybody in line was against the event’s cancellation. Some felt the “Drag and Donuts” event should have never been scheduled in the first place.

“Moms For Liberty beat us to the line. So a lot of our students and supporters here will not be heard on the agenda today,” Cousins said. That’s why she says she and other LGBTQ+ rights advocates coordinated a rally outside the building, immediately after the pre-agenda comment period.

Many people who supported the cancellation of the event, also came out to speak Tuesday. Demensio Barton, who recently ran against Teresa Jacobs for OCPS school board chair, said many of those parents are experiencing “anguish.”

“Parents are really hurting over this,” Barton told Spectrum News. “Their taxes have paid for their kids to go to these public schools, and because someone decided that one person’s feeling about themselves outweighed another person’s feelings — that, to me, is an unjust balance.”

When asked why he felt it was wrong to invite a drag performer to speak at an after-school event, Barton deferred, emphasizing that some parents are uncomfortable with what they believe to be the sexualization of their children.

“I think the biggest thing was simply this: it wasn’t so much what a person, what their desire was,” Barton said. “It wasn’t so much a fight against that, so much as it was a fight for what the parents were thinking, concerning their own kids.”

Barton also expressed his support for parents who feel uncomfortable about the idea of a transgender person using a certain bathroom at their child’s school. 

“Parents are wanting to know, is my child protected?” Barton said. “What if that boy, in the midst of using the toilet, decides: ‘I’m a boy again?’ If they can decide that they’re a girl, they can also decide that they’re a boy. Because it’s a decision.”

The majority of Americans believe that a person’s gender is determined by their sex at birth, according to the Pew Research Center. However, the share of younger Americans with that view is smaller than in the general population.

For Larkins and many other LGBTQ+ people, drag is simply about being creative and dressing up as somebody else.

“Drag is an art form. It’s always been an art form,” Larkins said. “It’s not about men dressing up as women. Anyone can do drag. It’s about becoming a character, about creating color and art and life and beauty.”

Larkins maintains that as a marginalized group, LGBTQ+ youth already face disproportionately high risk on a range of measures — and some feel recent legislation is making it even more dangerous for them to exist.

“People inside of that school board building and inside of the state legislature and honestly, in school boards all across Florida, they are attacking LGBTQ youth,” Larkins said. “They are trying to erase our culture, erase our history and erase us from schools. They have made it very clear that we are no longer welcome here.”

Nearly half of all LGBTQ youth seriously considered suicide in the last year, according to The Trevor Project.

School board chair Teresa Jacobs told Spectrum News the event’s cancellation was not added to the agenda because there was no relevant action the board could take on it. Jacobs also noted that the district superintendent, not the school board, made the decision to keep it off the agenda. 

2022-0627 Docket 68 State Motion to Dismiss