ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — A majority of emails sent to Orange County Public Schools board member Alicia Farrant earlier this year were supportive of an after-school club event featuring a drag queen guest speaker, and disapproved of the event’s cancellation, Spectrum News 13’s latest Watchdog investigation reveals.

The “Drag and Donuts” event was canceled March 22, the day before it was scheduled to happen at Boone High School, after Florida’s Department of Education threatened to investigate any OCPS staff members in attendance, according to the school district. It would have been the event’s third year running at Boone.

When Farrant spoke with Spectrum News on March 23, she said she’d heard from “dozens of parents” who were concerned about “Drag and Donuts.”

“I had dozens of parents contacting me, who had dozens of parents contacting them, saying that this was inappropriate and wondering why they were having this on school campus,” Farrant said.

But prior to March 22 — when Farrant made a Facebook post disavowing the event, and inviting parents to email her — only two different families emailed the school board member to complain about the event, according to records OCPS provided to Spectrum News 13 containing thousands of pages of emails.

After Farrant’s Facebook post, more emails about “Drag and Donuts” began pouring into her inbox. But after analyzing and deduplicating all the emails, Spectrum News 13’s Watchdog team found that of the 213 unique emails Farrant received from parents and community members, 136 of them — nearly 64% — supported the voluntary after-school event coordinated by student members of Boone’s Queer and Ally Alliance (QAA).

Only 60 emails — 28% of the total — were opposed to the event. The remaining 17 emails were neutral; most were sent by news reporters, seeking Farrant’s statement about the event’s cancellation.

Farrant refused to speak with Spectrum News 13’s Watchdog team about its findings, dodging multiple emailed and in-person interview requests this summer.

The event at Boone was never set to include a drag performance, according to the invited guest speaker and an email the school board’s deputy general counsel sent to district officials on March 22, weighing in on the event’s legality.

“It does not appear that the guest speaker will be talking about sexual content with the students who voluntarily attend. This is not a drag show, nor would a drag show be allowed on our campus,” reads the email from the school district’s Deputy General Counsel John C. Palmerini. “It appears that the speaker will be voicing a message of acceptance and love, no matter who you are. Such a message is permissible and welcome for our students.”

Palmerini sent that email the morning of March 22 to Chief of High Schools Jose Martinez and Boone High School Principal Hector Maestre, along with other district leaders and the OCPS school board.

In the email, Palmerini noted the guest speaker would need to clear a standard background check prior to the event. The school district confirmed to Spectrum News 13 that the speaker did, in fact, do so.

For guest speaker Jason DeShazo, who performs in drag as “Momma Ashley Rose,” the last-minute cancellation of the event was “disheartening.”

“It was an event the kids, the teens, had invited me to for several years. And literally, all we do is we talked about being queer,” DeShazo told Spectrum News 13.

“The ‘Drag and Donuts’ event literally was just me coming and speaking. There was no performance,” DeShazo said. “I share my story as a queer person, and then I open the floor for them to ask questions. So there never has been a drag performance by me at this event.”

DeShazo said ahead of time, students were asked to decide whether they wanted him to come dressed as himself or in character, as Momma Ashley Rose. The students chose for DeShazo to come in drag, he said.

DeShazo, other drag performers and many members of Central Florida’s LGBTQ+ communities say they feel targeted by recent state legislation, including Florida’s new “Protection of Children Act,” which created new statutory language this year defining “exposing children to an adult live performance” as a form of child abuse.

“It’s putting a target on us. It’s dehumanizing us, as drag performers, and using us as a scapegoat,” DeShazo said.

A federal judge in June issued a preliminary injunction blocking the law’s enforcement, agreeing with plaintiffs who argued that Florida’s Protection of Children Act is “constitutionally vague and overbroad.”

In his order, District Judge Gregory A. Presnell pointed out there are already laws on Florida’s books protecting children from obscenity — and, under Florida law, any minor accompanied by a parent or guardian can attend an R-rated film at a movie theater.

“This statute is specifically designed to suppress the speech of drag queen performers,” Presnell wrote in his order, which the state of Florida later tried and failed to push back against. In July, Presnell doubled down on his order, clarifying that it halts the law’s enforcement in all venues — not just Hamburger Mary’s, the restaurant that originally challenged the Protection of Children Act.

“(The Act) has a chilling effect on all members of society who fall within its reach,” Presnell wrote in his July order, denying the state’s request to limit the scope of his first order.

‘No way to protect those students’

For Boone High School senior and QAA president Scarlett Seyler, the event’s cancellation earlier this year was symptomatic of a larger problem in Florida.

“It’s so much time and energy into regulating queer students on campus, when there are so many other more rampant issues,” Seyler said. “Our literacy rates aren’t where they need to be. We have crazy levels of student poverty on campus. And we’re funneling money into fighting queer people (who are) saying, ‘hey, we’d like to be able to meet on campus, please.’”

Nearly 27% of OCPS students tested “inadequate,” the lowest ranking possible, for English Language Arts last year, according to data compiled by Florida’s Department of Education. And as Spectrum News 13 previously reported, the district reported an additional 3,000 inadequately housed students last year, compared to the year before.

Seyler says “Drag and Donuts” was supposed to provide a much-needed safe space for queer students, and she felt “gobsmacked” by the last-minute cancellation of the event.

“We don’t know how to communicate to students that it’s not their fault: there’s nothing wrong with you, there’s nothing wrong with drag or being non-conventional,” Seyler said, remembering how she and other QAA members scrambled to address the canceled event. “This doesn’t mean that you are not worthy of having a safe space.”

Seyler and fellow Boone QAA member Jacob Washuta say they fear the state’s tightening restrictions on school activities will only further harm queer youth in the long run, pointing to one of several controversial new rules approved by Florida’s Board of Education in July. Rule 6A-10.089 requires school districts to require signed parental permission forms for any extracurricular event or activity.

“It’s getting to the point where it’s easier to just host the club outside of school,” Washuta said.

Seyler agreed, saying, “It’s just taking the conversation out of the safe place, and putting it somewhere where you won’t be regulated. But it’s not going to stop extracurriculars from happening.”

Boone High School students Scarlett Seyler and Jacob Washuta met at Wadeview Park July 18, to prepare to speak out against several proposed rules Florida’s Department of Education passed at a public meeting the following day. (Spectrum News/Molly Duerig)

The students are concerned about how a lack of queer-affirming spaces in schools could negatively impact LGBTQ+ youth, who already report higher rates of suicidality and other mental health concerns than their peers, according to The Trevor Project’s annual survey.

“Drag is worth protecting, because it sends an important message to teenagers: that whoever you are can be loved, and you can be worthy of love, no matter who you are or how you present yourself,” Seyler said.

Although Seyler says some Boone staff members shared students’ upset feelings about the event’s cancellation, they weren’t able to assist.

“The administration is not going to touch queer issues, because when you do that, teachers get fired, and licenses get suspended or revoked,” Seyler said. “When you try to step in, you get removed, and you get replaced with someone who wouldn’t even consider stepping in. So there’s no way to protect those students.”

At a school board meeting in July, OCPS Chair Teresa Jacobs echoed a similar sentiment, describing “the attack” on LGBTQ students — especially transgender students — as “appalling.”

“This board did not decide not to have the ‘Drag and Donuts’ event,” Jacobs said. “But I will say that when the State Board of Education threatens to take away teachers’ certifications, I worry about losing the teachers who won’t work here in that environment, and replacing them with teachers who will … Because we have a lot of teachers who are heroes to our LGBTQ+ students.”

Jacobs encouraged attendees of July’s school board meeting to “stay in the fight,” and outlast current tensions surrounding LGBTQ+ issues in Florida — adding that for the first time in her life, she feels “completely incapable” of fixing the problems.

“I used to believe that you stand up to a bully. And I still do, with one caveat,” Jacobs said. “If I stand up to a bully, that’s going to come back and hurt my kids, but leave me alone, I have to think really hard about that (decision).”

Unprecedented outrage — and support

Each week, at a little tea shop in Lakeland, drag performers host a family-friendly charity bingo event organized by DeShazo, who describes it as a “safe space for all ages.” Often, DeShazo will host, switching to she/her pronouns while in character as Momma Ashley Rose.

While touching up her makeup ahead of one recent bingo night, Momma Ashley Rose reflected on just how drastically Florida’s culture around drag has changed in the last few years.

“In my 20-something years of doing drag, I’ve never seen the outrage that I see now,” she said. “No, it’s definitely new. And I was born and raised here in Florida.”

Amid the concern and confusion prompted by Florida’s new “Protection of Children Act,” some companies that were previously forthright about their support for LGBTQ+ communities are stepping that support back. Spectrum News 13 previously reported that several companies dialed back their public support of Pride events in Central Florida earlier this year, including four companies that withdrew promotional branding from Orlando’s longstanding “Gay Days” event.

But Momma Ashley Rose says despite all the negativity it’s brought, there’s also a flip side to Florida’s current spotlight on LGBTQ+ issues, including drag.

“It really kind of shows you who’s really there … to support you, who’s there to support the community, who’s there to support the love,” she said. “That’s such an important thing.”

That’s why she says she’s so passionate about continuing to cultivate safe spaces for LGBTQ+ Floridians, including youth.

“Everything that you see us do, say, act — everything on stage is accessible for all ages,” Momma Ashley Rose told guests at one recent bingo night she co-hosted, along with fellow drag queen Juno Vibranz.

“I believe the true meaning of acceptance is respecting the differences and embracing the commonalities,” Momma Ashley Rose said. “Everybody in this room, we have commonalities — but the differences, we learn how to respect it. As long as that respect and the differences aren’t harming other people; that’s what’s key.”