The July 27 meeting of the Detroit Lakes Public Schools board in northwestern Minnesota was supposed to be routine. Board member Julie Smith-Yliniemi told MPR News that the board's usual planning session the week before had raised nothing new.
"Right away there was a motion to amend the agenda, and that was a surprise motion to two of us (and) the superintendent," she said.
The added item was a resolution banning the display of materials such as rainbow stickers, flags, and buttons in the district's schools. It was aimed at the rainbow "safe space" stickers some teachers post in their classrooms to signal acceptance to LGBTQ+ students. It passed 4-2 that morning, with no public input.
"I was blindsided," said Smith-Yliniemi, who voted no and was the only board member to respond to MPR's request for comment. "I'm angry, but I am angry for our community as well because they deserve better than what they have gotten from our board." Two months later, the ban is on the books and the stickers are still up.
The resolution was two sentences long, and for a month nobody could say whether it covered only official school displays or reached as far as stickers on a student's backpack. "It was written in a way that was too broad, and so it seemed to target teachers, students, staff and parents who are a part of the district and politicize their identity," said Rebelle Marie, president of Detroit Lakes Pride.
The public got its first chance to speak on Aug. 24. Nearly 100 people filled the room, and 19 spoke. All but three opposed the ban.
Kerry Claypool-Lambert, a mother of three Detroit Lakes High School graduates, told the board that LGBTQ+ youth are more likely to attempt suicide. "The one thing that can help these children is affirming spaces and supportive adults," she said. "Having that can save a life, and by removing this support from schools, you are putting the lives of children like mine at risk."
Supporters of the ban argue the stickers take a side. Travis Janich, a pastor at True Life Church in Detroit Lakes, said he has asked administrators to act on them for years. At the meeting, he read a letter from a student who said they had been badly bullied by an LGBTQ+ peer and did not feel they could go to a teacher who had the sticker on the door.
"The student walked up to the door and saw that pride sticker, and they felt that that teacher has already sided with that community, that they couldn't find help," Janich told MPR. "And that's where my heart broke." Every teacher should be a safe adult for every student, he said, which would make the stickers unnecessary.
The Aug. 24 meeting ended in confusion. A resolution to pause the ban until the district's attorney could rewrite it failed. According to Smith-Yliniemi, that attorney had already privately urged the board not to adopt the ban as written. Then Superintendent Mark Jenson asked board member Sandy Nelson, who introduced the ban and voted against the pause, whether the stickers should come down.
"As far as I'm concerned, no," Nelson said, telling Jenson to wait for the attorney. The room erupted, with people asking the board to vote again on the pause and make it official. It did not.
That leaves the July ban as the board's last formal action, and it has not been enforced. What comes next is a rewrite. At a work session Tuesday, the board is set to consider a new version of the district's policy on "non-school-sponsored materials." It does not mention rainbows. It does remove language recognizing students' and employees' free speech rights, and it bars employees from displaying flags that have not been approved.
"I believe it is to hide the true intent of what was originally wanted," Smith-Yliniemi said. "Which is to get these stickers down. They're trying to find a way to continue that while avoiding legal problems."
The legal problems she means are real, and they split along the line the new draft draws. Students have strong free speech protection at school. The Supreme Court held in Tinker v. Des Moines in 1969 that neither students nor teachers "shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate." Employees are treated differently when they speak as part of the job. In Garcetti v. Ceballos in 2006, the Court held that "when public employees make statements pursuant to their official duties, they are not speaking as citizens for First Amendment purposes." A sticker a teacher posts in a classroom sits closer to that second category than a pin on a student's backpack does, which is why a policy aimed at employee displays may stand on firmer legal ground than a blanket ban. Lower courts are still sorting out how far that goes.
Minnesota has been here before. In Marshall, a pride flag was part of a display of about 30 flags that Marshall Middle School put up in late 2019. It became a yearslong fight that ended with the district settling with a group opposed to the flag and removing the whole display. The principal who championed it, Mary Kay Thomas, was demoted after a district investigation and sued. Her federal case was dismissed and she is appealing a dismissed state case, her attorney said.
The Detroit Lakes district runs four main schools, a high school, a middle school, and two elementaries, with about 2,500 students among them, according to federal enrollment data. Detroit Lakes Senior High enrolls about 790. The district also runs a handful of smaller alternative and early childhood programs.
For parents who want to weigh in before Tuesday's work session or the vote that follows, our guide to getting something done at a school board meeting covers how public comment works and how to get an item in front of the board.
Sources
MPR News: Detroit Lakes banned rainbows in school. But they're still up, for now
Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, 393 U.S. 503 (1969)
Garcetti v. Ceballos, 547 U.S. 410 (2006)
Enrollment figures from allk12's analysis of National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) Common Core of Data.
