COUNTER PRODUCTIVE

Substitute Teacher Who Co-Founded Gay-Straight Alliance Fired After Reporting Anti-Gay Flyers at School

Gay-Straight Alliance members say they’ve been bullied by a “Confederate kid club” at the school.

A substitute teacher who co-sponsored the Gay-Straight Alliance club at a Wyoming junior high school was fired shortly after reporting anti-gay and racist flyers that were posted at the school. Kaycee Cook said she believes she was fired for calling members of Wyoming Equality, a local LGBTQ advocacy group, to tell them about the flyers. Cook received an email from McCormick Junior High’s principal on Wednesday informing her that she’d been terminated. The email from Principal Jeff Conine to Cook reads: “I am notifying you that due to incidents that have occurred at McCormick you are no longer welcome as a guest or a substitute teacher in our building.” According to a student at the school, a group of students calling themselves the “confederate kid club” have been verbally bullying GSA students for weeks. The student was a member of McCormick’s Gay-Straight Alliance club, but no longer attends meetings. “I was in GSA until about four weeks ago, until it really started to get bad,” the student said.

Wyoming Equality Executive Director Sara Burlingame met with school district officials Thursday to discuss ways to move forward after the incidents. Burlingame said she was confident that she and the district share the same goal of making sure targeted students have adequate support. “Unfortunately, I don’t really feel the principal, Jeff Conine, shares that goal,” she said.

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