A Florida school district said it won’t renew the contract of a teacher who used a student’s preferred name, instead of legal name, without parental permission, in violation of state law.
Melissa Calhoun is a literature teacher at Satellite High School in the coastal city of Satellite Beach, Florida. According to her LinkedIn profile, she’s worked for the Brevard County Public Schools district for the past 12 years.
Unless the state intervenes, Calhoun, who did not immediately return requests for comment, could be one of the first educators to lose a job under Florida’s Parental Rights in Education law, or what critics call the “Don’t Say Gay” law.
Brevard County Public Schools conducted an investigation after receiving a complaint from a parent who said Calhoun had used a name other than their child’s legal name without the parent’s permission, according to a statement shared by Janet R. Murnaghan, a spokesperson for the district.
“This directly violates state law and the district’s standardized process for written parental consent,” the statement said. “Based on the teacher’s own admission that she knowingly did not comply with state statute she received a letter of reprimand. Teachers, like all employees, are expected to follow the law.”
Since the state will be reviewing Calhoun’s teacher certificate based on the complaint, the district said it will not renew her annual contract, which expires in May, until the issue is resolved.
Dozens of students staged a peaceful walkout Thursday to protest the district’s decision not to renew Calhoun’s contract, according to NBC affiliate WESH of Orlando.
“We’re here to really show support for Ms. Calhoun and to show that we are not OK with what is going on,” sophomore Brianna Knight told WESH. “We truly are upset that we are losing such a positive teacher.”
Calhoun’s supporters also started a petition asking the Brevard County School Board to reinstate her. As of Friday afternoon, it had garnered more than 22,000 signatures.
Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the Parental Rights in Education law in March 2022. At that time, it prohibited “classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity” in kindergarten through third grade “or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.”
A year later, he signed an expanded version of the measure that prohibits sexual orientation or gender identity instruction in prekindergarten through eighth grade, restricts reproductive health education in sixth through 12th grade, and bars schools from requiring students or employees to refer to each other with pronouns that do not align with their assigned sex at birth. It also prohibits transgender school employees from sharing their pronouns with students, among other restrictions.
In July 2023, a few months after DeSantis signed the expanded measure, the Florida Board of Education passed new rules to ensure schools were following the law and to “strengthen and enhance the safety and welfare of students in K-12 public schools and protect parental rights.”
Among those rules was a requirement that school districts receive parental permission before staffers can call a student by anything other than their legal name, including a nickname, even at the student’s request.
At a school board meeting this week, several parents spoke both in favor of and against the district’s decision not to renew Calhoun’s contract.
“There was no harm, no threat to safety, no malicious intent,” one parent of a student in the district who also said she was one of Calhoun’s colleagues said during the meeting, WESH reported. “Just a teacher trying to connect with a student, and for that, her contract was not renewed despite her strong dedication and years of service. I ask you, how can we justify this?”
School board member Katye Campbell said during the meeting that people might think the rule is “silly,” but that it’s important.
“The parents are the number one decision-makers for their children,” Campbell said, The Washington Post reported. In response to a question about students’ rights, she said the district shouldn’t interfere in families’ decisions “unless we legally have a reason to.”
