This is the sign West Ada School District needs to post today | Opinion

The West Ada School District administration desperately needs to abandon efforts to justify its decision to order the removal of a classroom sign declaring, “Everyone is welcome here.”

The district hasn’t yet missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity. And, as a recent report from KTVB shows, the district remains committed to its deeply mistaken policy.

The report shows that the district created a series of draft statements, first reported by Idaho Education News, attacking the media for simply reporting correctly on the issue — not on the basis of any supposed inaccuracy, but because they believe the media is motivated to seek clicks.

The draft also made it clear that the reason the sign was deemed controversial was not the phrase printed on it, but the associated graphics, as the Statesman’s Rose Evans reported, which show hands of various skin colors.

Which of those skin colors was not welcome?

Officials also recorded a rehearsal for a podcast appearance. In it, they made evidence-free allegations that the teacher and the media had coordinated the controversy with one another, and, somehow, to align with President Donald Trump’s unconstitutional decision to eliminate the Department of Education. (At the same time, they seemed to acknowledge that professional journalists like KTVB’s Brian Holmes would ask tougher questions.)

When the scandal broke out, there was an easy solution: Issue a statement saying that the district made a mistake, and the sign would stay. Instead, the district dug in its heels, attempted to find sympathetic outlets to get its side of the story out, and in general made things as bad for itself as it could — unfortunately taking students and teachers along for the ride.

West Ada should strongly consider hanging a sign on its administrative offices featuring the famous Law of Holes: “When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.”

It would be understandable if the district refused to give an inch because it was, in fact, enforcing a productive policy aimed at avoiding the politicization of classrooms. But it isn’t. It’s a rule motivated by and saturated with politics.

And, as Evans reported, school officials have said the policy responds to a recently passed state law banning many flags in the classroom, and an executive order issued by Trump comically titled “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schools.”

In its quest to stamp out anything it considers “woke,” this is what the far right has come to: A teacher posting a sign that reads “everyone is welcome here” is now considered “radical indoctrination.”

It’s important to note that the executive order does not require anything at all of local schools. It directs the creation of a commission to create patriotic education (you know, like they have in North Korea) and directs a number of cabinet secretaries to develop plans with the Orwellian title of an “Ending Indoctrination Strategy” (whose purpose is to set the course of turning public education into a system of right-wing indoctrination).

Regardless of the executive order’s goals, it is strictly irrelevant to the existence of signage in classrooms.

Why would the district provide such a link to try to justify its policy? It seems the district wanted to communicate that it adopted the spirit of the order: the cultural backlash against efforts at inclusiveness. In other words, a teacher has to take down a sign reading “everyone is welcome” because it is not politically correct for a school to indeed welcome everyone.

The key mistake was refusing to give teachers some reasonable sphere of autonomy, to trust them to do the job they’ve hired them for. That option remains where it’s always been, sitting right in front of the district, just waiting for officials to grab it.

You don’t need someone wandering the halls reviewing every piece of paper to see whether it conforms to the dictates and cultural preferences of the Republican Party. You don’t need to tailor school policy to the current political climate or the preferences of a president who is all about indoctrination.

Or you can keep digging.

This story was originally published April 11, 2025 at 4:00 AM.