A Wisconsin teacher who complained about the banning of the Miley Cyrus and Dolly Parton song “Rainbowland” has now been fired.
In a unanimous decision, the Waukesha School Board on Wednesday night voted to fire first-grade teacher Melissa Tempel, four months after she criticized Heyer Elementary School’s decision to prohibit her students from singing a pro-LGBTQ song in a school concert.
Earlier this year, Tempel took to Twitter to express frustration at school administrators who banned the 2017 pop-country track, which was once described by Parton as a song about “dreaming and hoping that we could all do better.” The song was written by Parton and her goddaughter Cyrus, who featured it on her sixth studio album, “Younger Now.”
“My first-graders were so excited to sing ‘Rainbowland’ for our spring concert but it has been vetoed by our administration,” Tempel tweeted in March. “When will it end?”
Tempel was placed on leave on April 3, local television station WISN-TV reported.
On July 12, all nine members of the School District of Waukesha Board of Education voted to fire the teacher.
“Today I was fired for tweeting that first-graders couldn’t sing ‘Rainbowland,” the teacher tweeted Wednesday after the four-hour hearing that decided her fate. “Tonight I have an (achy) breaky heart but tomorrow I’m gonna get up and keep fighting for what is right.”
Superintendent James Sebert accused Tempel of “deliberately” bringing “negative attention to the school district because she disagreed with the decision as opposed to following protocol and procedure and I believe that behavior is intolerable.”
Tempel said she believed the banning of the song was “something that the public would be really concerned about and that they would be interested in knowing about it.”
After the decision, the teacher’s attorney, Summer Murshid, said the case was “not about culture wars or rainbows” but Tempel’s rights to free speech as guaranteed by the Constitution.
“I think we are moving forward with next steps and Miss Tempel looks forward to vindicating her rights in federal court,” Murshid said, according to The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
