A Florida elementary school teacher is reportedly under investigation by the state Department of Education after she showed students a Disney movie that featured a gay character.
Jenna Barbee, a fifth-grade teacher at Winding Waters in Hernando County, was reported by a student’s parent after screening the movie “Strange World” as a “brain break” in between students’ standardized testing, she said in a TikTok video Sunday.
Barbee said she thought the animated movie was “perfect” because her students had been studying earth science and ecosystems and the PG movie is about a family of explorers navigating an alien world. All of her students’ parents signed a consent form for their children to watch PG movies and she didn’t think there would be an issue.
“Is a character in the movie LGBTQ? Absolutely. Is that why I showed it? No,” Barbee said. “I’m not pushing anything, just being accepting. Does that have anything to do with why I showed it? Not in the slightest. The LGBTQ aspect of the movie, they’re harmless, it’s just a talked-about crush and it’s only a couple lines.”
A district representative confirmed to JS Monday that the state’s DOE is investigating the incident but that it is not being referenced as “indoctrination,” as Barbee said she has been accused of.
The parent was identified by the Tallahassee Democrat as Shannon Rodriguez, who was elected to the school board last fall and was endorsed by the right-wing group Moms for Liberty. Rodriguez was separately in the news last month for reportedly trying to remove books from school shelves that she labeled “smut” and “porn.”
Barbee said the parent has been “on a rampage to get rid of every form of representation in schools” and that because of this investigation, her students have been pulled out of her classroom to be independently questioned by a state investigator. This has been traumatic for her students, she said.
Florida public school teachers are prohibited from teaching about gender and sexual identity due to the Parental Rights in Education Act — dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill — which was signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) last year.
Rodriguez and a spokesperson for the state’s DOE did not immediately respond to JS’s requests for comment.