LGBT teachers are moving on in Florida

Former educator who already spent career avoiding mention of wife says ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill reinforced message she doesn’t belong

Nicolette Solomon felt her mother’s words come through the phone and settle, heavy, in her stomach.

It was January, and her mother was talking about a new bill, just proposed in the Florida Legislature, that would severely limit how teachers could discuss gender identity and sexual orientation with their students. Critics were already calling it the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. Her mother, a vocal supporter of LGBTQ rights, sounded upset.

Solomon stood listening inside her fourth grade classroom at Key Biscayne K-8 Center, part of Miami-Dade County Public Schools. The kids were at lunch. She glanced around at the neatly labeled black buckets of supplies, pictures of former students and a small sign reading, “If you can’t be kind, be quiet.” She looked down at the diamond wedding ring she had worn since marrying her wife, Hayley Solomon, in Coconut Grove almost exactly four years ago.

She wondered: Could she be herself and stay a teacher in Florida?

The Parental Rights in Education bill passed the Florida House and Senate in March, despite strong opposition from LGBTQ activists and the political left, including President Joe Biden’s statement that the bill was “hateful.”

Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, signed it into law March 28, vowing as he did so that children in his state would “get an education, not an indoctrination.”

The new law was both broad and vague, outlawing “classroom instruction … on sexual orientation or gender identity in kindergarten through grade 3” and stipulating these lessons must be “age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate” for all older students. But it was specific when it came to punishment: Parents could sue school districts for violating the law. It would inspire a wave of copycat legislation — Alabama’s governor signed a near-identical measure into law in April, and similar bills are pending in at least 19 other states.

Although Florida’s law does not take effect until July 1, LGBTQ teachers in Florida felt its impact immediately. In Orlando, a sixth grade science teacher decided to resign this spring after parents wrote a letter complaining that he had acknowledged his same-sex marriage at school. In Cape Coral, a middle-school art teacher lost her job after admitting her own pansexuality to students.

In Miami, Solomon read the text of the law closely. She found it upsetting, but not because she planned to talk — or had ever talked — about gender identity, sexual orientation or LGBTQ issues in the classroom. Although Solomon’s straight colleagues often made casual references to their spouses in the course of teaching, she had never dared to mention her wife to students.

Part of her reticence came from the lack of support — veering into open animosity — she had faced from some colleagues ever since her first week on the job. She had long ago learned to nod and smile, swallowing her feelings, when other teachers told Solomon that her marriage was a violation, that it broke God’s rules, that it went against their religion and the way they believed the world should be.

Pondering the impact of the new Florida law, Solomon recalled how fourth graders love to ask questions about their teachers’ private lives. She remembered the time some of her students Googled her name and somehow found her wedding video on Vimeo, which she hadn’t realized was publicly available. Solomon thought about how, under the new law, a parent lawsuit could stem from just one awkward exchange about her personal life.

But she also recalled the students she had grown to love over her four years of teaching. She thought about the handwritten letter one of her first students, a boy, once handed her: “So I have a secret that is that I am gay!” She thought about how, as far as she knew, she was the only LGBTQ teacher in the school.

Feeling sure of nothing, Solomon pulled up LinkedIn and began scrolling for jobs.

From the start, there was a part of her life that Solomon hid from her students.

For the first three years of her teaching job, no one told her explicitly to conceal the fact she was married to a woman. Solomon did it on her own, scared of sparking “drama,” she said.

She knew that Florida leans Republican and that, although Miami is supposed to be a “blue bubble,” many of the city’s older residents hold deeply conservative beliefs, including a dislike of LGBTQ people.

So when students, spotting Solomon’s wedding ring, asked for her husband’s name, she laughed it off with an eliding joke. When a student asked if she’d been to Rhode Island — which she had, because Hayley Solomon’s family is from there — she cut the conversation short. Still, some students figured it out: some by looking up her wedding video or her Instagram, which mentioned her wife, and some by catching sight of her phone background, a wedding picture.

Then in fall 2021, when Solomon went to a colleague for advice about a transgender student’s request for a gender-neutral bathroom, the staffer’s face darkened.

“Let me give you a tip,” the woman said. “Don’t talk about anything LGBT. Don’t do it. Parents can get upset. Don’t do that.”

Feeling terrified, Solomon did not think of protesting. “Oh,” she said, “sure.”

Asked about these incidents, Miami-Dade schools spokeswoman Jaquelyn Calzadilla wrote in a statement Wednesday that the school district has policies “that expressly prohibit discrimination and harassment” and that the school board “strives to provide a workplace and educational environment free from” both.

Five months later, Florida made Solomon’s colleague’s suggestion into state law.

On Feb. 2, Solomon handed in her letter of resignation, effective immediately.

The final straw was when her supervisor implied she would face consequences for taking a week’s leave so she could get fertility treatments; she and Hayley were trying to have a baby. But the bigger problem was it no longer felt possible to be lesbian and a teacher in Florida. The years of homophobic comments from her colleagues now seemed enshrined in state law, their message — “you don’t belong here” — triumphant and irresistible.

She still thinks about her students most days. But of the more than 630 jobs she has applied for in the past five months, not a single one was as a public school teacher.

She will never teach again, Solomon said. Not in Florida.