According to ksnt.com, a Kansas school district banned a 13-year-old girl from riding the bus after saying “I’m a lesbian” to her peers.
Izzy Dieker is an eighth grader at Americus School and, like many other students, rides the bus everyday. One day changed that when her bus driver wrote her up for using inappropriate language after overhearing her say “I’m a lesbian.”
“Once I got home my dad told me he got a call from the school that I was kicked off for saying ‘I’m a lesbian’,” Dieker told KSNT.
Dieker’s mother, Tasha Cooper, said she has struggled to get a response from administration and the district superintendent said he can’t discuss the details of the case.
“She’s 13 years old and these are adults acting like this towards her,” Cooper told KSNT. “We’ve had talks about other students calling her names and I expect that because they’re repeating what their parents say. But for the staff, the people that I trust her with, I was angry.”
“It made me upset to think that people go through this everyday and also that kids are growing up thinking that it’s a horrible thing and they shouldn’t be talking about it at all when honestly it should be the other way around,” said Dieker.
Despite the administration’s lack of response, classmates and teachers have stepped up to show support for Dieker, wearing rainbow pins in solidarity.
“I really just wanted to let Izzy know that there are people that absolutely support her,” said Michael Lanzrath, an openly LGBTQ+ teacher. “Our job as educators is to make sure that all our kids are taken care of. To us, all means all.”
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