A Delaware teacher admits in a video that she holds her school’s gay pride club meetings during regular class hours, rather than after school, so parents don’t know about it.
Glasgow High School teacher Christina Grider’s Tik Tok video has been deleted, but was posted to Twitter by education watchdog Eye Inside the Classroom.
“I have OK’d this with my administration, with my principal and my admin on that,” she says in the video, “because the kids told me straight up, they were like, ‘We don’t want to have it after school just in case,’ because some of their parents don’t know.”
Grider complains in the video that another teacher at the school in Newark, Delaware is upset because kids are being pulled out of class for 30 minutes each week to attend the sexual identity club during normal classroom hours. Meanwhile, public records indicate the school is well below state averages in test scores.
Grider said the teacher objecting to the meetings “is now crossing a line,” adding she intended to haul the offending teacher in front of the administration. She accused the objecting teacher of saying “extremely homophobic things.”
“They do not need this teacher messing with them, being homophobic, transphobic, saying things that she shouldn’t,” Grider said. “So now I’m p—-d off, and she will now have to deal with me because I will be taking her to admin.”
The Lion contacted the administrative offices of both Glasgow High School and the Christina Public School District offices after a search of the district and school directory failed to turn up a teacher named Christina Grider. The district later confirmed Grider is a teacher in the district, but said it was unaware that instructional time is being used for extracurricular activities.
“The Christina School District is aware of the social media post that has caused concern in our school community,” Alva P. Mobley, public information officer, told The Lion via email. “We are reviewing the post and meeting with the individuals involved to resolve it immediately, ensuring equity and respect for all students in our schools.”
This teacher at @GlasgowHS explains that she hosts a GSA club during school hours to keep it discreet from parents. She also explains that students are losing 30 minutes a week of instruction time. pic.twitter.com/cjo5cd0E9C
— 👁 Inside The Classroom (@EITC_Official) December 12, 2022
But one group that advocates for parents said the district is still missing the larger point about parental involvement in schools.
“The idea that a teacher would take it upon themselves to pull children out of instructional times to attend a club activity without the consent or knowledge of parents is wrong,” Tiffany Justice, co-founder of the parental rights nonprofit Moms for Liberty, told The Lion.
“Parents have a reasonable expectation that when their children are in class, teachers will utilize that instructional time.”
Statistics clearly show students in the urban Delaware high school serving mostly poor and minority students need more instruction time, not less. A variety of indicators point to deficiencies in graduation rates and in student readiness for post-secondary education.
Data provided by the National Center for Education Statistics, the U.S. Department of Education, the U.S. Census Bureau and the Delaware Department of Education via School Digger say Glasgow High School “ranks worse than 94.9% of high schools in Delaware” and dead last in the district.
Only 23.5% of students in 11th grade at Glasgow High School meet the state’s standards for English, while just 5.2% meet the standard for math, according to the Delaware Department of Education.
Great Schools gave Glasgow High a 1 out of 10 score, noting that AP participation and SAT scores make college success more difficult for graduates of the school.
Last year, nine students were arrested, with two charged with inciting a riot and seven with disorderly conduct, after state police were called to the school to break up a fight that involved a Taser.
“The [school resource officer] and school staff members broke up the initial fight, but then the group separated in four separate smaller groups and continued actively fighting throughout the hallways,” said police in a news release, according to the local ABC News affiliate. Watch the story here.
In the state of Delaware, school choice is limited just to public schools. In the Christina School District, the district’s charter high school is only accepting open enrollment though a lottery.
