Rachel Stonecipher

Since administrators removed safe space stickers and teachers from MacArthur High, students say bullying is up, classes are suffering — and they want answers

After LGBTQ “safe space” stickers were scratched off teachers’ doors and windows at MacArthur High School during the weekend before school started on Monday, Aug. 30, teacher Rachel Stonecipher, who questioned the removal of the stickers, was herself removed from the school — in front of her students.

So now, students who were already upset at the removal of the stickers and possible loss of what they saw as safe spaces also have to deal with Stonecipher’s disappearance. Administrators escorted her out of her seventh period newspaper class on Sept. 16. Students still have not been told anything about her employment status.

In response to questions about which policy prompted the stickers’ removal, district officials have only provided an unsigned, untitled Irving ISD memo, dated Aug. 30 — which was after the stickers were removed over the weekend of Aug. 27-29 — which they say precipitated the action.

Stonecipher’s absence and the disappearance of the rainbow stickers are not sitting well with students at MacArthur High. Those willing to speak out say they want to know what happened, and they want back the safe place Stonecipher’s classroom represented for them.

“I want to know answers,” senior Laura Marquez said. “That is the least the school could do after getting rid of one of the best teachers MacArthur has ever had throughout the years.”

Stonecipher was one of the Gay-Straight Alliance sponsors, and, before her departure, her classroom was recognized by students as one of the few “safe havens” they could rely upon.

“I know she was a person that you could go to if you were not feeling accepted or you needed a person to talk to through hard times,” said senior Donald Lubbeck, one of the many students who believes Stonecipher’s removal was a targeted response to her questions about the stickers.

“I feel that she was immediately shut out and not given a proper understanding of why [the stickers] were removed,” he said.

Marquez agrees: “She continuously pushed my limits when it came to my creative writing and English skills. She was not … only interested in looking the best in the administrators’ eyes. She was willing to make sacrifices and stand up for her students when they were being mistreated.”

After Stonecipher’s removal, some students found themselves facing more challenges to their mental well-being: “She was easily one of the most reliable teachers at Mac for me, and now I feel like there is just one less place where I can openly feel safe and have my voice and opinions heard,” Chloe Madho said.

MHS students feel like what has happened since the start of school blatantly contradicts administrators’ claim that “Every space in Irving ISD is a safe space.”

The school’s GSA usually meets biweekly. But on Aug. 31, GSA members invited administrators to a special meeting to hear about the club and to hear students’ distress over removal of the safe space stickers. Senior Natalie Gonzales said she went to the GSA meeting for the first time that day to hear Principal Natasha Stewart’s response. But the principal didn’t show.

Stewart did not attend a GSA meeting until more than a month later, on Oct. 5, after hundreds of MacArthur students staged a Sept. 22 walkout over these issues that garnered international media attention, and which the principal suggested was “malicious” and ill-informed in an unannounced response the next day over the school’s PA system.

At the Oct. 5 meeting, Stewart was asked to address the student body as a whole on the school’s daily KMAC video announcements regarding the situation but still has not done so. And when asked at the same meeting why she had the safe space stickers removed, she said only that she would have done it differently had she known there was such a strong GSA on the campus.

GSA members say they just wanted to correct what they assumed had been a miscommunication. Now, though, they feel they are being neglected.

“If the district [had asked] us before they took action, then [GSA members] could have had adult conversations [with administrators] instead of having to fix what has already been done,” said senior Victor Frausto.

Reports of anti-LGBTQ bullying have increased since the stickers were removed, and still, students say they are being kept in a haze, with no answers forthcoming.

“I put in several times of incidents that have happened to me, and the school board has done nothing to prevent it,” said a student who wished to remain anonymous. “They don’t care, as long as their image doesn’t look bad.”

Several GSA club members, other students, teachers and a MacArthur parent — nationally recognized physician and ally Dr. Theresa Patton — spoke about their worries at school board meetings on Sept. 20 and Oct. 18. Three months have since passed, and the only response? Silence.

“The school board does not care about MacArthur’s students and couldn’t even meet my eye during my speech,” said sophomore Aly Harbin, who spoke before the board. A Change.org petition calling for the stickers to be replaced and Stonecipher and another teacher, who had also questioned the removal of the stickers, returned to their classes has almost 1,300 signatures. It’s part of students’ efforts to bring in outside support and keep their concerns on the school board’s agenda.

“There is power in numbers,” Gonzales said.

Stonecipher had taught an English 2 Honors class charged with making sure students would be ready for the EOC exam coming in April. For two weeks after her removal, her students sat in the auditorium or the spectator gym during her class periods, with no assignments and no lessons.

Stonecipher also taught the only yearbook, newspaper and journalism courses at MacArthur, and she advised the UIL Journalism Team, the Philosophy Club and the GSA. Students say in her absence these classes and clubs are withering. Students sit in class each day with a substitute teacher, wondering what happened to Stonecipher.

Administrators have also stalled production of MacArthur’s first-ever physical newspaper, saying students are unprepared to produce it. Students are also required to write a “persuasive paragraph” with each of their articles, arguing why their chosen topic is “important enough” to be news.

Before Stonecipher’s disappearance, the school had a vibrant 35-person staff to write, design and edit the paper, including section and layout editors and an editor-in-chief whom Stonecipher had empowered with the skills and tools to print the paper with her supervision. Their student newspaper had a brand-new name and design concept and more than 15 articles in production — none of which have been approved for publication by any of the administrators now handling those classes, as the fall semester comes to a close.

Instead, students are getting basic assignments for concepts they had already learned before Stonecipher was pulled from class. Recently, they were told to find a news article from any major news outlet, then spent three days in class “annotating” it, with 10 required annotations to mark “false information or facts.”

Without research into the issues concerned, students were expected to find “fake news” in the professional journalists’ work they found online.

Before she left, Stonecipher had created and completed a DonorsChoose project to fund the newspaper’s production, receiving support from around the country that helped provide paper, booklet staplers and newsstands.

These donations have remained boxed and unused. Students were told that even if they opened the boxes, they don’t know how to use the items donated.

Madho, editor-in-chief of the MHS yearbook, said the yearbook staff isn’t faring much better. Not all yearbook staff members, she said, have acknowledged that their teacher may be gone permanently.

“It does feel like a lot of the staff has lost motivation, which is completely understandable,” said Madho.
Stonecipher’s Philosophy Club, formerly one of the liveliest academic clubs at MacArthur, is also dwindling. “Since Ms. Stonecipher has been gone, I have had to scramble … trying to figure out how we are going to keep the Philosophy Club running smoothly,” said Marquez, the club’s president.

Students want more than an apology for all that has happened. Harbin said administrators should do more than release statements seemingly aimed only at pacifying the students and parents who have spoken out.

“Irving ISD can implement ways for their students to feel more comfortable and make it blatantly [clear] through actions, and not just empty words,” she said. “Just because it’s a hard topic does not mean they get to ignore it because it will not go away, and we will not back down.”

Elle LeeAnne Caldon is a junior at MacArthur High School

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MacArthur High holds LGBTQ safety training

On Oct. 28, the administration at MacArthur High School in Irving brought in a group from Austin to do a virtual training session entitled “Promoting School Safety for LGBTQ and All Students,” created by the UT Austin Institute for Excellence in Mental Health. The full report can be found on a website called StoriesAndNumbers.org.

All MacArthur administration, faculty and staff attended.

“Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) students often experience negative school climates, where they are subjected to bias-based bullying and discrimination based on sexual and gender diversity,” the report’s summary begins. That’s followed by strategies designed to keep students safe:

• Enumerated policies. (Neither Irving ISD nor MacArthur High School have these).

• Professional development on LGBTQ issues. (This presentation was an attempt to begin that).

• LGBTQ-related resources. (Teachers had been removed from classes, and Safe Space stickers and Pride flags were removed from doors and classrooms, a controversial move that prompted this program).

• Student-led clubs, which they refer to as Gender and Sexualities Alliances but are better known as Gay-Straight Alliances. (MacArthur High’s GSA is still in place although barely operating since administrators moved earlier this year to remove Safe Space stickers and removed some teachers from their classrooms, etc.).

What got the semester off on the wrong foot for MacArthur’s LGBTQ students was the removal of Safe Space stickers from the doors of a number of classrooms. That contradicts the advice of experts hired by the school. In the report upon which the presentation was based, safe spaces are specifically addressed.

“The identification of ‘safe spaces’ or ‘safe zones’ for LGBT students has emerged in several studies as another school resource associated with positive school climates,” the report states.

And one slide shown the faculty and staff specifies: “Students who have learned about LGBTQ+ issues at school report less bullying and more safety.”

Apparently, no one in the administration saw the irony in any of this, while LGBTQ students and their allies are reporting increased bullying at MacArthur High School.

— David Taffet