[A Wisconsin schoolteacher is being punished for trying to have
her students sing a popular song by Dolly Parton and Miley Cyrus.]
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WISCONSIN TEACHER TO BE FIRED AFTER COMPLAINING ABOUT
“RAINBOWLAND” SONG BAN  
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Prem Thakker
May 18, 2023
The New Republic
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_ A Wisconsin schoolteacher is being punished for trying to have her
students sing a popular song by Dolly Parton and Miley Cyrus. _

Dolly Parton, left, and Miley Cyrus perform "Jolene" at the 61st
annual Grammy Awards in Los Angeles on Feb. 10, 2019, Matt Sayles/Matt
Sayles/Invision/AP

 

_All the hurt and the hate going on here (It needs to stop here)_

_We are rainbows, me and you_

_Every color, every hue_

_Let’s shine through (through)_

_Together, we can_

_Start livin’ in a rainbowland_

These are the lyrics that have prompted a Wisconsin school district
superintendent to recommend a first-grade teacher be fired.

On Monday, Heyer Elementary first-grade teacher Melissa Tempel says,
she was notified that Waukesha School District Superintendent Dr. Jim
Sebert is recommending her termination, in retaliation for her
complaining about the district’s decision to ban her students from
singing Miley Cyrus and Dolly Parton’s “Rainbowland,” a
chart-leading song about hope, positivity, and love.

The escalation follows an ongoing drama
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has left thousands of people across the nation scratching their heads.

In March, first graders were barred from singing “Rainbowland” at
their spring concert. Tempel had been working with other teachers to
prepare for the concert, and they had decided that “Rainbowland”
would be a good addition to the set list. But administrators,
including the school principal, barred the song’s inclusion. The
opponents cited a district-wide policy on items “that may be
considered political, controversial, or divisive.”

After Tempel tweeted about the ban, bringing mass public attention
toward it, she was placed on administrative leave
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with few details made available to the public.

“I am deeply concerned that Ms. Tempel was removed from her
classroom for standing up for them and what she knows is right,” a
parent from Tempel’s class said at the time.

Even State Superintendent Dr. Jill Underly weighed in, sending
a letter
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directly to Waukesha Superintendent Sebert and the Waukesha School
Board, saying she was “deeply troubled by the harm caused” by
their actions, imploring them that “this damage is reversible. It is
paramount that you change course now.”

Underly cited Waukesha’s own policies to argue what the
administrators’ course of action should be. “The district can
instead choose to foster inclusive environments where staff, students,
and families are able to ‘identify important issues, explore fully
and fairly all sides of an issue, weigh carefully the values and
factors involved, and develop techniques for formulating and
evaluating positions,’” she wrote, citing the very same policy
that led to the song ban.

“You can choose to re-evaluate the decision to place a district
employee on administrative leave and, instead, recognize that
‘acknowledging the rights of [the district’s] professional staff
members as citizens in a democratic society is, in fact, in the best
interests of the School District of Waukesha,’” Underly continued.

Yet it seems, instead of reflecting on whether they may have reacted
too harshly, they decided to go even further and move to fire Tempel.

“I have missed my first graders every single day since I was removed
from the classroom with no notice, no ability to provide plans and no
ability to communicate with my first-grade families, Tempel said in a
statement. “It will take me a long time to process how cruel the
District’s actions were to those families and the chilling effect my
termination will have on any other educators in the Waukesha
community.”

The recommended firing follows a long-standing concern by parents and
teachers about district administrators policing expression within the
classroom. Waukesha’s Board Policy 2240, “Controversial Issues in
the Classroom,” has set guidelines for when the district would
“permit” a so-called “controversial issue” to be introduced in
the classroom. Along with the innocent Cyrus and Parton song, the
policy has also been applied to bar students, teachers, and even
classroom walls from donning rainbow designs, because of their
association with the LGBTQ community.

With regard to the song banning itself, Waukesha School Board
President Dr. Kelly Piacsek and Superintendent Sebert previously
insisted they did not “insert themselves into the song selection.”
The pair has framed the decisions as ones made by Heyer Principal Mark
Schneider and the school’s music teacher, insisting that they only
reviewed and upheld decisions made by Heyer’s staff. Yet they
interestingly took it upon themselves to explain the exact rationale
of why the song was banned. They explained that the “subject matter
addressed by the song’s lyrics” was not in line with the “the
age and maturity level of the students.”

While Tempel has encouraged individuals not to call the district out
of concern for taking time and resources away from students, she
herself plans to pursue a First Amendment claim against the district.
“I cannot allow others to be intimidated into silence. These are
matters of public concern that the Waukesha Community has a right to
know about and I stand by my decision to share the impact of Policy
2240 with the public. I will rest easy every night knowing that I did
what was right for children.”

_Prem Thakker is an associate writer for breaking news at The New
Republic. His work has appeared in The American
Prospect, Washington Monthly, CNN podcasts, and his
newsletter Better World [[link removed]]_

_The New Republic was founded in 1914 to bring liberalism into the
modern era. The founders understood that the challenges facing a
nation transformed by the Industrial Revolution and mass immigration
required bold new thinking._

_Today’s New Republic is wrestling with the same fundamental
questions: how to build a more inclusive and democratic civil society,
and how to fight for a fairer political economy in an age of rampaging
inequality. We also face challenges that belong entirely to this age,
from the climate crisis to Republicans hell-bent on subverting
democratic governance._

* public schools
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* book bans
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* Teachers
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* Wisconsin
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