An English teacher in Florida has been accused of “grooming” a student to “transition and to be gay” resulting her contract not being renewed.

Its believed that Melissa Calhoun is the first known educator to be fired over Florida’s Boards of Education rules that require written permission from parents for a student to be addressed by any name that is different to the one of their official documents.

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An investigation by Florida Today revealed that Brevard Country school board member Matt Viser was contacted by a parent who accused the faculty at Satellite State School of “influencing and grooming” her child to “transition and be gay”. The information was made public via Freedom of Information requests.

The parent claimed that school officials had “targeted” the child and encouraged them to be transgender as retribution of the parent’s political beliefs which included opposition to Covid mandates and association with Moms for Liberty, a group that campaigns against LGBTIQA+ rights.

School officials launched an investigation and Calhoun was the only staff member who admitted using the teen’s preferred name and pronouns. She had been teaching the student since before the new rules came into effect in 2023.

The teacher immediately apologised, and told the 17-year-old teen that moving forward she would only be able to use the name stipulated by the parents. In follow up meetings Calhoun shared that the student had always done well in class, never had any behavioural issues and subsequently there had never been any need for contact with the parents.

Calhoun said it was an oversight on her part that she had not double-checked to see if the student had a permission slip to be using an different name, and insisted that he continued use of the student’s name after the rules changed was not motivated by any political belief, and she was “shocked” when she discovered she had inadvertently violated the rules.

In the report Calhoun details that she had never spoken to the student about their trans identity or their process of transitioning gender, but had used the pronouns they preferred, and the name they’d been going by for several years.

While the investigation recommended that she be given a warning for the violation, the areas Superintendent Dr Mark Rendell chose not to renew her contract, and reported her to state authorities.

A spokesperson for the School District said they decided to take stronger action because no guidance had been provided on what to do in these circumstances.

“The decision was made by Dr. Rendell based on uncertainty surrounding the state’s response to the incident. We do not have any historical data to guide us on a FLDOE (Florida Department of Education) response to this violation. We do not want to start the 2025-2026 school year with a teacher whose license may be revoked by the state.” they told the media.

Despite a public outcry from parents, the school board has decided to hold up the decision to fire the teacher.

Prior to this in 2023 a non-binary teacher was fired under the name raft of rules, as schools no longer allow staff to identify as a gender other than male or female.

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