Instead, the tone among the 30 parents, teachers and even a couple fifth grade students from Stambaugh's class who sounded off at the listening session was nearly entirely positive about the decision and wanted to push the district further to ensure safety and respect in schools.
Fifth grader Scullie Langley-Williams (who gave her age as 10 1/2) was in Stambaugh's class and came to the meeting with a classmate to express her support for the student teacher who disappeared from her classroom on September 15th. "If Mr. Stambaugh had said he was dating a girl or married to a girl, it definitely would have gone really different and no one would have told on him," Langley-Williams said quietly into a microphone to the crowd gathered in a chilly cafetorium. Scullie and her friend Sara (also 10 1/2) said the class had no discussed Mr. Stambaugh's removal, beyond the teacher saying that he had to go. The pair were surprised to find out that the story was in newspapers.
"I gotta respectfully say, ya blew it," said openly gay teacher Brenda Koenig, who says she opted to teach in a private Montessori school in part because she knew her rights would be better protected there than in a public school.
"Here you have a young student teacher who goes to a school that has an anti-discrimination policy, who teaches in a district with a beautifully-written anti-discrimination policy, yet when he says something about his sexual orientation—a protected class in Oregon—it took parents and teachers holding the district's feet to the fire to make it enforce its own policy."
Dozens of members of Sexton Mountains' staff and dozens of parents signed on to letters of support for Stambaugh. Superintendent Jerry Colonna cited the sentiments of staff as a major reason why he and the rest of the Beaverton admins decided to reverse their decision. Colonna and other board members also noted that Stambaugh had only six days of teaching time before he uttered the line about "choosing to marry a man"—he should be forgiven for answering a question with an honest answer that some parents believe was inappropriate.
Superintendent Colonna heaped the blame for the incident, and the district's handling of other LGBT issues, entirely on himself and promised change. "There are plenty of times when I could have stepped forward and said this is wrong," said Colonna."There have been various times when issues with LGBTQ individuals have come forward and the district has not moved in a straight forward way to right things. I believe in this crisis we have hit the tipping point where we will see a safer, more inclusive school."
When one parent raised concern about how Mr. Stambaugh would be disciplined for answering a students' question with a "political" answer, school board member Jeff Hicks delivered a little speech that won a round of applause. Noting that he is a longtime teacher whose brother is gay, Hicks told the crowd, "As a teacher, you walk a fine line between spilling everything about your life and keeping overly private. I tried to be as real a person as possible. I kept pictures of my family on my desk and my life was open to students because I knew they were going to ask."
Christina Langley-Catti, the stepmother of Stambaugh's student Scullie, also chimed in. "I think that people need to look around at their fellow Oregonians. There are over 3,000 kids in this state being raised by same sex parents. If they mention their two mommies or two daddies in class, will they be kicked out for not being 'age appropriate'?" said Langley-Catti.
News of Stambaugh's reinstatement hit MSNBC and Huffington Post this afternoon. If you're interested in getting involved, Basic Rights Oregon is organizing a rally to go to a school district meeting in support of the decision next Monday.
