LONGWOOD, Fla. ( Associated Press) — Hundreds of students at a Florida high school will not receive their yearbooks until photos of students with rainbow flags and a “love is love” sign are covered up in a protest against the state law called “don’t say gay”.
School officials said they don’t want it to appear the school supports the students’ protest.
Lyman High School Principal Michael Hunter said in a statement Monday that “photos and descriptions” of a student demonstration in March against the Parents’ Rights in Education Act were not “previously captured in the screening process.” revision”.
The law, signed by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, prohibits teaching classes on sexual orientation or gender identity from kindergarten through third grade.
“Instead of reprinting the yearbook, at a steep increase in cost and delay, we have chosen to cover up material that does not meet board standards in order to distribute the yearbooks as quickly as possible,” the director said in his statement.
Yearbook faculty advisor Danielle Pomeranz told the Orlando Sentinel that she was asked to look into putting stickers on photos and descriptions of the rally. She said reprinting the yearbooks would cost $45,000.
“This shouldn’t happen because what we did as journalists was record what was happening on our school grounds,” Skye Tiedemann, one of the yearbook’s managing editors, told the Sentinel. “Covering that is not right… This is censorship.”
Tiedemann told radio station WKMG that the students were going to have a party on Monday where classmates would sign yearbooks, but it was cancelled.
The students of the Longwood school, near Orlando, have created the hashtag #stopthestickers (stop the stickers) that circulates on social networks. They planned a peaceful march Tuesday night, when the Seminole County school board meets, WKMG reported.
