While waiting for students’ rides at the end of the school day, Cameryn Lovett, a teacher’s assistant at the Mulberry Creek Elementary School in Harris County, Georgia, overheard a student making homophobic comments.

“He was talking badly about gay people,” she told WTVM. “He was saying he didn’t know any gay people because they are bad and stuff like that, so I was like, ‘You do know a gay person.’”

Related

The right is destroying LGBTQ+ education. But gay union leader Randi Weingarten has a secret weapon.

“He let me know he wasn’t very happy to hear that,” she added.

She saw the interaction as a teachable moment. But an internal investigation by school administrators found her comment inappropriate and in violation of the educators’ code of conduct. So they gave her a choice: Resign or be fired.

Never Miss a Beat

Subscribe to our newsletter to stay ahead of the latest LGBTQ+ political news and insights.
Subscribe to our Newsletter today

Lovett now wonders whether a straight teacher would’ve also faced an investigation for making similar comments. Georgia doesn’t have a “Don’t Say Gay” law forbidding educators from teaching about LGBTQ+ identities.

The school’s human resources (HR) administrator allegedly told Lovett that a resignation would look better on her educational resume than a firing. So Lovett resigned.

Later, she discovered that resigning made her inelligible for recieving unemployment benefits or taking any future legal actions against the district.

Lovett could have talked to an attorney before resigning, according to Borquaye Thomas, an education attorney with The Teachers Lawyer LLC. He told the aforementioned news outlet that Lovett also could have taken advantage of the fair dismissal act, a state law entitling educators to a hearing before termination.

Lovett did neither. Thomas said the forfeited hearing could make it more difficult for her to find a future job in schools.

“I feel like I was duped a little bit,” she said of the school’s HR administrator.

“I’m not the only gay person that works in the Harris County school district,” Lovett noted. “There are kids growing up in that school district that are gay.”

“I’m someone that a lot of kids looked up to,” she continued. “All I tell them is, ‘Speak up for yourself and be true to yourself.’ But now, they don’t know if they can trust the school.”

Subscribe to the LGBTQ Nation newsletter and be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.