SPRING HILL, Florida (LifeSiteNews) — A Florida teacher who is facing backlash after showing her fifth-grade students a movie featuring a homosexual character has responded by arguing that parental “rights are gone when your child is in the public school system.”
Hernando County fifth-grade teacher Jenna Barbee got into hot water after she showed her students the film “Strange World,” the first Disney movie to feature an openly homosexual character and the biggest box-office flop of 2022.
School board member and parent Shannon Rodriguez raised the alarm about showing the film in class, triggering an investigation into Barbee by the school district and the Florida Department of Education.
Florida teacher in @HernandoSchools says parents don’t have rights in their children’s education:
“rights as a parent, those rights are gone when your child is in the public school system.” pic.twitter.com/wcZRhReuHY
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) May 16, 2023
“It is not a teacher’s job to impose their beliefs upon a child,” Rodriguez said about the incident during a recent school board meeting. “Religious, sexual orientation, gender identity, any of the above. But allowing movies such as this assist teachers in opening a door — and please hear me — they assist teachers in opening a door for conversations that have no place in our classrooms.”
Barbee defended her decision to show the film during an interview with CNN on Tuesday, arguing that Florida under Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis is “trying to strip individuality and diversity to fit one common agenda,” and that parents who don’t want teachers talking with students about LGBT ideology don’t have rights over their children while they’re at school.
“What she’s missing and what these parents are missing is they’re not in the school system. That just shows me she’s ignorant and has not come and volunteered at all,” Barbee told “CNN This Morning” in response to Rodriguez’s comments. “These conversations, these doors, they’re open.”
Barbee noted that children in the classroom “have one-to-one devices” and are “able to pull up” things online that teachers “have to shut down.”
“These conversations, these doors that she’s talking about, that’s telling you I’m stripping her rights as a parent, those rights are gone when your child is in the public school system,” she said.
Barbee said students are already “talking about these things,” at school, “where they get 90% of their socialization for the day.”
“We can’t shut down every conversation every child has,” she said.
Barbee argued that showing children movies with homosexual characters is merely “representation,” not indoctrination, and that “pushing the beliefs that all these things are wrong, that is indoctrinating.”
It remains to be seen whether the Florida Department of Education and the Hernando School District will agree with Barbee’s assessment or will side with Rodriguez.
RELATED: Poll: Americans overwhelmingly oppose letting teachers indoctrinate kids with LGBT agenda
Florida’s Parental Rights in Education bill bans the teaching of LGBT ideology in Florida’s kindergarten through third grade classrooms and mandates that gender and sexuality-related instruction presented to older children be age-appropriate. On Wednesday, Gov. DeSantis signed a bill expanding the ban on LGBT ideology from pre-K through eighth grade in the Sunshine State.
Barbee’s remarks triggered outrage on social media. Catholic conservative commentator Matt Walsh, who has helped bring widespread public and legislative attention to the sexual indoctrination and mutilation of children via transgender ideology, reacted to Barbee’s comments by urging parents to “[g]et your kids out of the system.”
“Literally any other education option is preferable to the public school system,” he said.