Supporters of a middle school teacher in Idaho gathered at her school district’s office this week to share their outrage over officials’ decision to remove a sign from her classroom reading “Everyone is welcome here.”

The offending sign had a drawing of people’s hands in all different skin tones, a detail that made the administration believe that it was illicit “DEI,” and came on the heels of another controversy around rainbows in a district classroom, which some parents deemed “sexual” because of the rainbow’s association with LGBTQ+ people. The confiscation was part of a district-wide sweep by administrators of what they called DEI and LGBTQ+-inclusive imagery on school campuses.

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The protest found children and parents recreating the sign and other inclusive images and language in chalk on sidewalks outside area schools and the district’s administrative offices in support of the Lewis and Clark Middle School teacher Sarah Inama.

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“Idaho too great for hate,” read one colorful message.

The protest followed a directive from district officials in February, coinciding with the president’s executive orders banning DEI and “gender ideology” in the federal government, instructing principals to “go out into classrooms, go out into hallways … and just open your eyes to what’s hanging on the walls,” Marcus Myers, chief academic officer for the West Ada School District, told a local podcast host.

A district spokesperson later told the Idaho Statesman that Inama’s sign could be associated with “DEI initiatives.”

The sign hung on Inama’s classroom wall for four years before it was removed. In 2022, the district implemented a “content-neutral” policy for what schools can and cannot display on campus and in classrooms.

“School property shall not be used by personnel for the advancement of individual beliefs,” the policy reads. “It is the desire of the district that the physical environment of district facilities be content-neutral, conducive to a positive learning environment and not a distraction to the educational environment.”

Those policy changes followed a state law passed by the Idaho legislature the same year that barred public schools from compelling students to believe that members of a certain race “are inherently responsible for actions committed in the past” by members of that same race.

In the same legislation, Idaho code was revised to state that critical race theory divides people and is “contrary to the unity of the nation and the well-being of the state of Idaho.” State funding was banned for schools that broached the subject of slavery’s long-lasting effects on American society.

Inama’s sign is the latest inclusive message to fall victim to the district’s sanctioned censorship.

Just days after the president’s inauguration, a since-deleted Instagram account called WestAdaParents posted images of a classroom bulletin board it called a display of “sexual rainbows” and demanded its removal.

School administrators complied.

The bulletin board included six posters and four flags, including Mexico’s, along with images of hands in different skin tones, and two rainbows, one multi-colored and another in different skin tones. One poster read “Be kind.” Another said, “In this room you belong here, you matter, you are worth it, you are important, you are loved, you have a voice, you are valued, you are respected.”

A third read, “Everyone is welcome here.”

The bulletin board appeared in a room used for English as a second language instruction, with the flags representing countries that some students are from.

“These are clearly sexual rainbows, since they don’t have the right amount of colors as an actual rainbow,” one of the Instagram posts on the bulletin board said, referring to how rainbows are often drawn with seven stripes but Pride flags generally have six stripes.

Others said that “everyone is welcome here” and the differing skin tones would make some students feel unwelcome.

The district responded to the account directly by saying that the bulletin board would be removed and saying it violated district policy requiring displays to be “content neutral.”

One parent, who said the entire discussion was “aggressive,” told the Idaho Statesman that other rainbow posters were taken down, even if they had nothing to do with messages of inclusivity, including one poster for the school’s walking club.

“It’s an elementary school,” she said. “Everything is rainbow.”

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