Last week the Arizona legislature introduced a bill (SB 1236) that will appropriate funds to pay for a special "In God We Trust" license plate. Like many states, Arizona offers several dozen vanity plates so drivers can display their loyalties to schools, animals, children, the military, or other causes. Drivers pay more for these license plates than the generic version, but offering them still costs the state money, so an appropriations bill is necessary.
As Arizona reels deeper into an economic abyss, which has resulted this year in another $170 million in cuts to universities and the very public dismantling of our once admired healthcare system, apparently we can find funding to thank god for our right to drive. So, it's okay to mix church and state on the highway; hell, through the appropriation the legislature is even encouraging drivers to tout their religious beliefs.
Just don't put lefty slogans on your car, especially slogans that question the Religious Right, because, as 10-year teacher Tarah Ausburn found out recently, that's grounds for dismissal.
Check out this 3-minute video from Phoenix's local NBC affiliate, Channel 12. Ausburn was an English teacher at Imagine Prep High School in Surprise, a Phoenix suburb. By all accounts, she is a wonderful teacher, which you can sense from her passion and the fact her students (and their parents) are supporting her. As seen in the video, her Toyota Prius is plastered with progressive messages, but apparently the one that got her in trouble with the school's administration was:
Have You Drugged Your Kid Today?
According to a story on KPHO-TV, Ausburn said this particular sticker is
"... kind of a criticism of us tending to over-medicate hyperactive kids who might not need those medications."
I guess it's not appropriate to question Big Pharm and the barrage of TV commercials you see everyday suggesting that you "ask your doctor" if your child might need a pill because she seems a little down in the dumps. Heck, considering the stickers on her car, I guess it's not appropriate for a teacher to question war, to ask students to think about the assault on the planet, to advocate LGBT rights, or to "be socially aware" -- the message of one sticker. As Ausburn says in the interview, she sees her job as teaching students to "think critically about issues."
As someone who once taught H.S. English in a Bible Belt school district, I know the buzz saw you run into with parents when you invoke "critical thinking." A parent once yelled at me at a district meeting that she had filled her son's head with the lord's message, and I was trying to dismantle his defenses against satan through this critical thinking crap.
Imagine Prep, which is part of a 73-school nationwide charter school syndicate, so far has not responded to interview requests from local media on advice of their attorney. I can't help thinking of the irony here in the school's name, and what John Lennon might think.
The school's administration told Ausburn that her car's messages do not fit "the culture of the community." It appears that "community" was a small group of parents who approached the school's principal last month, objecting to Ms. Ausburn's politics. Happily, the principal supported his teacher's right to free speech, so the parents took their complaint to the district supervisor, who fired Ausburn.
I imagine she'd still have a job if her car were filled with slogans about the Tea Party, John McCain, birtherism, the right to life, or anti-immigrant messages. Or maybe she can scrape that "COEXIST" sticker off her car and get one of the new "In God We Trust" license plates to fit better into "the culture of the community."
UPDATE: There are a lot of comments below about the legality of the school's actions. I don't know the First Amendment implications, if any -- especially because it's a charter school (although it receives public funds), the parking lot is private property, and Arizona is a right-to-work state (in the extreme). As an educator, my concern is the message to students: if you speak out you will be silenced. The school's website says they are "growing minds," they are "preparing students for lives of leadership," and "With Imagine, there is no standardized student." No standardization at all, as long as you think like we do.