BOISE, Idaho — Days after news broke that a Meridian teacher was told to take down a poster in her classroom, West Ada School District administrators stood firm on their statement that the sign — which displays an array of hands with different skin tones, below the words “everyone is welcome here” — violated the district’s policy on content-neutral displays.

“At the end of the day, we have to adhere to policy,” Marcus Myers, the district’s chief academic officer, told The Ranch Podcast on Friday, after not responding to multiple interview requests with local news outlets including The Idaho Statesman.

Myers told Sarah Inama, a world civilization teacher at Lewis and Clark Middle School in Meridian, to remove the sign in February because it violated district policy that requires classroom displays to be “content neutral and conducive to a positive learning environment,” according to previous Statesman reporting. The policy he referenced dates back to 2022, when the school board approved changes to West Ada’s policy on classroom displays.

The policy lists signs allowed in classrooms, including the Idaho state flag and banners connected with student work and “motivational posters,” though the policy emphasized that teachers are not limited to what’s listed. It also said the district believes the American flag should be displayed in every classroom, the Statesman reported in 2022.

The policy lays out a process for handling complaints, allows district administrators to implement the policy and directs questions about it to the superintendent.

“Our board of trustees wanted a policy that removes distractions, or perceived distractions, from the classroom,” West Ada spokesperson Niki Scheppers told the Statesman in a phone interview. “So they felt it necessary or deemed it appropriate to create a policy that guided staff in creating content-neutral classrooms, not only for their own protection from parent complaints ... (but) from removing political discourse from the classroom so that our teachers could focus on instruction.”

Myers told The Ranch Podcast that the decision to remove the poster wasn’t in response to any complaint. He said district administrators in January instructed school principals — including Lewis and Clark Middle School’s Monty Hyde — to “go out into classrooms, go out into hallways ... and just open your eyes to what’s hanging on the walls.”

This “proactive” and districtwide approach, Myers said, surfaced concerns about the poster, which were then addressed by a “team of district administrators” through discussions with Hyde, legal counsel, Inama and a representative from West Ada’s teachers union.

West Ada policy followed Idaho law

The changes to West Ada’s classroom display policy were proposed after Idaho lawmakers passed a state law 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, the Statesman previously reported.

It added a new section to Idaho code stating that critical race theory, a study that emphasizes slavery’s impact on society today, divides people and is “contrary to the unity of the nation and the well-being of the state of Idaho.” No state funding can go toward these prohibited teachings, the law says.

Discussions around changing West Ada’s classroom display policy in 2022 were informed by this new law, with “content neutrality” seen as a way to prevent bias — or accusations of bias — in schools.

“This policy is about creating the best environment possible for student learning and is consistent across our school district,” a district spokesperson said at the time.

Not everyone agreed.

The West Ada teacher’s union at the time, Zach Borman, raised concerns about the exclusion of the LGBTQ+ pride flag from the list of items teachers could display, the Statesman previously reported.

Borman said he understood why the district wanted to “ensure political neutrality,” but that where he found the policy problematic was “that it ends up implying some items that are human rights issues as political in nature.”

‘Political climates change’

Inama told the Statesman that her “everyone is welcome here” poster has hung on the wall of her classroom for four years, since before the district updated its policy in 2022.

So what’s changed since then?

Scheppers acknowledged to the Statesman that “political climates change.” She emphasized that the district’s issue with the sign wasn’t its message but the imagery of the different colors in the word “everyone” and the hands with different skin tones.

“While the ‘everyone is welcome here’ poster conveys a message of openness, its imagery aligns with themes commonly associated with DEI initiatives,” Scheppers said in an email, in reference to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.

“What it means to have different color hands open might have been something different when I was younger, and now they represent different political movements,” she added by phone.

In follow-up communications, Scheppers clarified that the “presence alone” of different skin tones in an image “does not inherently define or categorize a message as DEI-related.”

“The meaning of any visual element depends on context, intent and audience interpretation,” she said.

Myers told The Ranch Podcast that he believed the poster would have been acceptable had it included only the words “everyone is welcome here” without any imagery of hands with different skin tones. He also said the poster violated school policy on content-neutral classrooms because it did not have “curricular ties.”

When the Statesman asked Scheppers whether the sign would be acceptable if it had included images of only white hands, or of hands of another color not associated with skin tones, Scheppers said it wasn’t “fair to speculate.”

In response to questions about the poster’s removal, Scheppers also referenced an Idaho bill that would ban displays that “present political, religious or ideological views” in public schools and an executive order by President Donald Trump that requires schools to end “racial indoctrination” relating to DEI initiatives. The Idaho bill hasn’t become law. The executive order in reference does not require action from schools on public displays.

West Ada teacher remains in limbo

Scheppers told the Statesman that the district has received an outpouring of feedback “on both sides” in the days since Inama went public about being asked to remove her sign.

“Our district leadership, administrators and teachers have been personally targeted in public discussions,” Scheppers wrote in an email, citing an Eagle family’s lawsuit against the school district over allegations of racial harassment, as well as a federal complaint filed over a Gay-Straight Alliance at one of West Ada’s schools.

She said the school district has to strike “a delicate balance” between complying with evolving state laws and federal guidelines “while upholding our longstanding commitment to a rigorous, respectful, safe, and welcoming school environment.”

After being told by administrators that her sign must be taken down, Inama initially removed them, but then had a change of heart, the Statesman reported. Inama has been told that she has until May to take them down. She is unsure what she will do.

“Obviously, it would not be easy or ideal to lose my job,” Inama told the Statesman. “I would miss my students immensely, and it would be a real financial hardship for me. But I just fundamentally feel ... so unsettled and disturbed by what they’re asking me to do. I just can’t be complacent in it.”

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(Idaho Statesman reporter Sally Kruztig contributed to this story.)

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