News/Commentary

Fla. teacher slams parental rights: ‘Those rights are gone when your child is in the public school system’

May 17, 2023 | | Print Article

A Florida 5th-grade teacher named Jenna Barbee, who was nailed for violating a state education law when she showed a Disney film with a gay character to her young students, is flatly stating that parents are stripped of their rights when they send their children to public schools.

Barbee teaches at Winding Waters School in Hernando County. She defended showing her class the 2022 Disney animated film “Strange World” for an earth science lesson. Parent and school board member Shannon Rodriguez complained which resulted in the teacher being investigated by the school district and state Department of Education for showing the film.

Rodriguez was incensed over the showing of the movie.

“It is not a teacher’s job to impose their beliefs upon a child, religious, sexual orientation, gender identity, any of the above,” Rodriguez said at a recent school board meeting. “But allowing movies such as this assist teachers in opening a door — and please hear me — they assist teachers in opening a door for conversations that have no place in our classrooms.”

Barbee is using the leftist line that students are already having conversations about same-sex relationships among themselves and on social media and that it would be impossible for teachers to stop them. She argues that a parent’s right to shield their child from those conversations is “gone” when that child attends public school.

“What she’s missing and what these parents are missing, is they’re not in the school system. That just shows me she’s ignorant and has not come and volunteered at all,” Barbee proclaimed on “CNN This Morning” Tuesday.

“These conversations, these doors, they’re open. These students have one-to-one devices. The amount of things they’re able to pull up that we have to shut down – these conversations, these doors that she’s talking about – that’s telling you I’m stripping her rights as a parent, those rights are gone when your child is in the public school system because there are students talking about these things,” she continued.

“It’s where they get 90% of the socialization for the day. We can’t shut down every conversation every child has,” Barbee added.

The teacher is crying victim and contending that the parent and school board member is targeting her over the issue. She also accused Gov. Ron DeSantis of trying to rid public schools of “diversity.”

(Video Credit: ABC Action News)

In April, Florida’s education board approved an expansion of the Parental Rights in Education bill. It bars school employees or third parties from giving classroom instruction on “sexual orientation” or “gender identity.” Governor DeSantis signed the bill that leftists called the “Don’t Say Gay” bill last year. It was expanded to apply to K-12 grades.

“They’re trying to strip individuality and diversity to fit one common agenda. It’s ruining everything. It’s not what America stands for,” Barbee told a sympathetic CNN host during her interview.

The teacher denied that she was trying to “indoctrinate” her students and accused conservative parents and GOP leaders of indoctrinating children to believe LGBTQ relationships are morally “wrong.”

Barbee said that she knew there was a gay character in the film but didn’t think it was a big deal, according to Fox News. She said she had “no idea” she might have been violating the state education law.

“What she’s saying is that we are indoctrinating by showing these things. But actually, we’re just showing a representation of our students that are already there. Indoctrinating is going around and telling you [that] you can’t do all these things. She is pushing the beliefs that all these things are wrong, and that is indoctrinating,” the teacher said, deflecting her actions onto Rodriguez.

There was plenty of reaction to the teacher’s assertion concerning parental rights:

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