MAINEVILLE, Ohio — Vanessa Srikantham laid out a flurry of colorful classroom signage on her kitchen table.
“You can do big things,” one reads. Another is inscribed with a reminder: “Treat others the way you want to be treated.”
Srikantham, a Little Miami Schools parent and substitute teacher, contends those and similar signs would be banned from district classrooms under a proposed school board policy.
The policy, which had its first reading during a board of education meeting on Tuesday, looks to dictate what items are appropriate to display in classrooms across the Little Miami School District.
If passed, the policy would limit what teachers can use to decorate classrooms to a narrow list of eight item categories:
- The U.S. or Ohio flag
- The Little Miami flag or mascot
- Curriculum posters that are “part of a temporary unit of study”
- Superintendent-approved award or recognition displays
- School sports displays
- Military, college or university posters placed in “approved locations”
- Country flags representing foreign exchange students placed in “approved locations”
- School club flyers, notices or invitations placed on “approved bulletin boards”
The display restrictions would extend beyond the classroom, under the policy, and include displays on stadium fencing, walls, doors, ceilings, district-owned vehicles, the district website and district email network.
“We have dealt with a lot of discord in the district in the past calendar year, since the previous school board election,” Srikantham said. “Our community did not ask for this.”
School board member David Wallace, who was elected in November 2023, proposed the policy.
“I ran on the fact that I was going to get politics out of the classroom, and I got roughly about 5,000 votes,” he said. “We should not have to worry that our children are being subjected to materials that go against your household's values and beliefs.”
It is unclear what spurred the need for the policy. When asked if the school district had any documented incidents related to classroom displays, Wallace said yes but didn’t provide specific instances.
“Yes, there are some items in the classrooms. I do not believe it's in every classroom, but it's certainly enough to have this conversation,” he said. “I've walked into classrooms before, and I've seen the ‘Don't tread on me’ flag. I've walked into other classrooms, and I've seen an LGBTQ+ flag.”
“There are not currently any LGBTQ+ support signs or stickers in any of the schools at Little Miami,” Amanda Van Mil, a mom of three Little Miami Schools students, said. “But this would disallow anything like that from being kind of brought back in in the future.”
WCPO 9 News reached out to the other four school board members on Friday. As of publishing, only one responded but declined to comment.
Concerned by the prospect of such a policy, Van Mil and Srikantham are promoting an online petition that emerged in opposition: Little Miami Stakeholders Against the Proposed Flags and Displays Policy. To date, more than 600 people have signed it.
“We have teachers who have signed it. We have employees who have signed it, we have former students who have signed it. And those are just people we know by looking at their names,” Srikantham said.
“I don't put a lot of weight into that,” Wallace said of the petition. “A lot of the information that's going around is not accurate, and people signing a petition are high school kids and stuff.”
Some of the petition’s supporters spoke out against the policy at Tuesday’s meeting during a public comment period lasting more than one hour.
“We started our family and have decided to stay here because of the inclusivity that we have seen within this community,” said Courtney McKeen, a school district resident. “This policy of the flags, we believe, is not (inclusive) and would be detrimental to our school system.”
About 20 people spoke on the policy during the meeting, with some lending their voices in support of it — including a Warren County Republican Party official, a representative from the controversial group Moms for Liberty and the executive director of a national organization that aims to “eradicate controversial curriculums” from U.S. schools.
“(The policy) reflects what our schools are truly meant to be: places of learning, growth and unity,” said Kim Georgeton, chair of the Hamilton County chapter of Moms for Liberty. “Not arenas for personal philosophies or political advocacy.”
“The elections are over. And the ideologies that would oppose the flag and displays policy were soundly defeated (in November),” said Christian Mays, a Warren County Republican Central Committee member.
In a phone conversation on Friday, Mays described the policy as a necessary step in getting “politics” out of the classroom.
“If you look at the election, you go from (President-Elect) Donald John Trump all the way down,” he said. “It was very clear (voters) want to return to normal.”
Addressing the policy supporters who spoke on Tuesday, Srikantham said, “Only four of them live in Little Miami.”
“There were 10 to 12, so only four of them live in the district,” she said. “Everyone else came from Lebanon, Franklin, next door in Kings Mills.”
Van Mil, a former Little Miami Schools teacher, criticized the policy’s “broad language” and the impact it will have on teachers left to interpret it.
“I really feel like a lot of the teachers are just very sad and afraid,” she said. “I would worry about doing something that would bring attention from the board.”
Wayne Lyke, president of the district teachers union, denounced the policy on Tuesday.
“This heavy-handed policy would result in every classroom in the district being stripped to bare walls,” he said. “The decorations that teachers put into their classrooms are a reflection of their curriculum. It is a reflection of their personality, it is a reflection of their character.”
A near-identical classroom display policy passed in an Ohio school district near Columbus last year.
In response, the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio (ACLU) sent a letter to the Big Walnut Local school board requesting the policy be repealed.
“Yet even if (the policy) were coherent enough to be enforced, it would be a brazen attack on students’ First Amendment rights to free expression,” the December 2023 letter read.
The policy could see revisions, Wallace said, when board members meet for a work session next month.
“I certainly think this can be expanded upon,” he said. “This is certainly a start for a conversation, and I look forward to our work session next month.”
The Little Miami Board of Education will hold its next meeting on Jan. 28.
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