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Florida art teacher fired after coming out to students as pansexual

Florida art teacher Casey Scott

Florida art teacher Casey Scott. (WBBH)

A Florida art teacher has said that she was dismissed for answering kids’ questions about her identity, revealing that she is pansexual.

Casey Scott was, until recently, in her first year as an art teacher at Trafalgar Middle School in Cape Coral, Florida.

She told WBBH that during one class, she was discussing identity with her students, and some of them began drawing Pride flags that represented their own identities. When they asked Scott how she identified, she told them she was pansexual.

After the class, she displayed the children’s art on her classroom door, but said she was soon contacted by school administrators, who told her to take the art down.

Scott said she was sent home, and told the same day that she was being released from her contract. As she was still on probation, the school was able to dismiss her without cause.

“A discussion happened in class and because of that, now I’m fired,” Scott told the local news station.

Lee County School District, which covers Trafalgar Middle School, told The Independent: “The district exercised its right to terminate the teacher’s probationary contract because she did not follow the state mandated curriculum.”

Scott’s firing comes a little more than a month after Florida governor Ron DeSantis signed the state’s widely-condemned ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill into law.

The legislation, which bans the discussion of LGBT+ topics in classrooms, does not come into effect until 1 July 2022, but the art teacher’s experience is likely to be a taste of what is to come.

Teachers across the state have been fearing the devastating effects of the legislation on their students and on their own livelihoods, but Republicans celebrated the loss of Scott’s job.

Bryan Fischer, an anti-LGBT+ activist and former chaplain to the Idaho Senate who has hosted prominent conservative politicians on his radio, tweeted: “She can’t say she wasn’t warned. Florida is serious about protecting the sexual innocence of students.”

South Florida Republican congressional candidate Vic DeGrammont added: “Florida middle school teacher blames ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill for being fired after she told students she is pansexual and got them to draw gay pride flag.

“Well deserved! Keep playing with our children, and more of this will happen.”

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