SIX WEEKS AFTER the Beaverton School District canned him for candidly answering a student’s question about his relationship status, gay student teacher Seth Stambaugh is back in the classroom. And district officials—worn down by community outrage, legal threats, and embarrassing national headlines—are promising to reform their approach toward LGBT issues.
The reversal was announced just before a planned school board “listening session” last Thursday, October 21. District leaders met that day with administrators from Lewis and Clark College, where Stambaugh, 23, is a graduate student, and unanimously voted for reinstatement.
“There have been various times when issues with LGBTQ individuals have come forward and the district has not moved in a straightforward way to right wrongs,” Superintendent Jerry Colonna told a crowd of about 30 parents and citizens that night, citing staff and community pressure as a major factor in the district’s backpedal. “In this crisis and response, I believe we have hit the tipping point where we will see safer, more inclusive schools.”
Getting Stambaugh back to work seemed like a long shot on September 15. That was when district officials told him his truthful answer to a fourth grader’s question about same-sex marriage was “inappropriate.” When the student asked why he wasn’t married, Stambaugh said he would like to marry a man, except that it’s illegal—an exchange eventually relayed to a parent who complained. So what made the district flip and welcome Stambaugh back?
Some credit is due to Stambaugh, who treated his dismissal seriously—as a student teacher, he isn’t protected by workplace discrimination laws or union rules—and decided to go public. Even if, at first, all he wanted to do was freak out.
“I felt like they were asking me to go back in the closet, and that was terrifying,” Stambaugh told reporters Friday.
Instead of hunkering down, Stambaugh asked lawyer Lake Perriguey to take his case pro-bono. Perriguey gave legal voice to Stambaugh’s belief he’d been the victim of discrimination. And after the firing was first reported online by the Mercury [“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” News, October 7], his story went national.
Perriguey also threatened to sue if Stambaugh wasn’t reinstated—usually a sure-fire way to make bureaucrats sit up and listen.
But it wasn’t just lawyers talking.
The turning point seems to have come when a surprising group rallied on Stambaugh’s behalf: parents and teachers at his suburban school. Twenty-seven teachers from Sexton Mountain Elementary published a letter in the Mercury two weeks ago, saying that even though they didn’t all agree that Stambaugh’s comment was “appropriate,” the district’s ban was out of line. Twenty-two parents followed up a few days later with their own letter.
Eventually, in an all-staff email sent last week, Colonna apologized for the “hurt and disappointment” the incident caused. And he promised reforms, including monthly meetings with LGBT advocacy group Basic Rights Oregon.
But Stambaugh is the first to say that promising reform will not fix broader concerns over a culture of discrimination.
“The decision to reinstate me is great, but it does not address the larger issue at hand, which, quite frankly, is killing our students,” says Stambaugh, invoking the memory of the nation’s recent queer teen suicides, and noting that he still has no clarity about why or how the decision to ban him was made.
Former Beaverton private school teacher Brenda Koenig, who is queer, echoed that sentiment at Thursday’s listening session. “I gotta respectfully say, ya blew it,” Koenig told the school board. Stambaugh “teaches in a district with a beautifully written anti-discrimination policy, yet when he says something about his marital status, it took parents and teachers holding the district’s feet to the fire to make it enforce its own policy.”
One of Stambaugh’s students, Scullie Langley-Williams (who gave her age as 10 and a half) told the board she was excited to have Stambaugh back. She spoke softly into the microphone:
“If Mr. Stambaugh had said he was dating or married to a girl, no one would have told on him.”
One thing that sticks out in all this is, that to this day noone knows the idenity of the homophobic parent who complained in the first place. How could it be that soo much shit can be started just by one coward making an anonymous complaint? Why does THAT person remain protected?
DamosA what would you do? What do you mean by “protected?”
The squeaky wheel gets the grease, and in this case the other wheels squeaked more. I’m glad he was reinstated; it was the right thing to do.
My guess is that some fundamentalist parent got word and got in touch with someone with similar beliefs and this thing blew up.
I think its ok to let the parent be quiet in the aftermath of this… imagine whats going through their head though!!
The whole “gay teacher” thing is like a dog whistle to the right-winger/christian coalition, it plays right into their “indoctrinating-of-the-youth” fears they all seem to share. The sooner everyone starts treating non-heteros like human beings and not like some disease that needs to be “tolerated” the sooner we can start wringing our hands over real social issues.
Just what are the parents teaching their children that they would think it was okay to ask the marital question anyway? It is none of the kid’s or parents business. But since it was asked, the teacher did the right thing and answered honestly. There is nothing wrong with being gay. If he was straight, would there have been a problem answering this question?
I thought about boycotting Beaverton in light of this whole mess. but where else could I find a Bed Bath and Beyond AND a Subway??
I hope he learned his lesson and will dress less provocatively in the future.
I’m a bit confused. In the initial article the question asked by the student was “Are you married” in this article they say the student asked why his teacher wasn’t married…
I’m glad he got his job back, it’s shitty that he had to go through all of this in the first place, but I still feel that it’s inappropriate to give a fourth grader personal information about your marital status, unless it’s your kid, REGARDLESS of your sexual orientation…
As a product of the public school system, I knew the “marital status” of most, if not all, of my teachers. Either because they were women and had the “Mrs.” in front of their name, or because of examples cited in class of “my husband…” or “my girlfriend…” I recently saw an episode of a Nick Jr. pre-school aimed animated program with my twin girls that was based in a classroom. The female teacher was getting married, and not only talked openly about her wedding but invited the students in her class to attend the ceremony and even got one of the girls and one of the boys in class to be her flower girl & ring bearer. I had a Health teacher in high school who actually talked INCESSANTLY about her divorce and her ex-husband. In the “straight” community people in every profession talk openly, and often, about their significant others or spouses without even really noticing that they’re doing it half the time. Go to work someday and try to notice. Try to keep track of when other people mention who they’re with or something about their love life and try also to go an entire day without mentioning, in any capacity, your own “special someone”. When the gay community talks openly in public about their home-life or puts a rainbow sticker on their car or does just about anything “gay” it is called a “political agenda”. But if a straight person in the same public arena has the same conversation with the pronouns swapped or puts a family of stick figures or ‘just married’ on their car its not even noticed. I am a lesbian. I have been with my partner for more than 10 years. We have 3 year old twin girls and BOTH of our names are on their birth certificates. I am Mama & she is Mommy. The only AGENDA I have is the right to talk openly about my family without fear of backlash.
Bravo to the school board for righting their wrong.