By Gavin Mackintosh-
A teenage girl has allegedly been banned from her school bus after she was overheard saying she was a lesbian.
Izzy Dieker, 13. who attends Americus School in Americus, Kansas, was accused of using vulgar language by the bus driver after he overheard her saying ‘I’m a lesbian’ during her usual 30-minute bus journey.
The bus driver said the openly gay eighth grader had failed to comply with orders.
Izzy’s unfair treatment had been escalated by the time she arrived home later that day, her school had contacted her father to let him know she had been suspended from using the bus altogether.
”Once I got home my dad told me he got a call from the school that I was kicked off for saying ‘I’m a lesbian’, she said.
Izzy’s mother, Tasha Cooper was livid about the news.
Tasha said: ‘She’s 13 years old and these are adults acting like this towards her. We’ve had talks about other students calling her names and I expect that because they’re repeating what their parents say. But for the staff, the people that I trust her
with, I was angry.’
Izzy continued:
It made me upset to think that people go through this everyday and also that kids are growing up thinking that it’s a horrible thing and they shouldn’t be talking about it at all when honestly it should be the other way around.
Her LGBTQ+ teacher Michael Lanzrath said: ‘I really just wanted to let Izzy know that there are people that absolutely support her. Our job as educators is to make sure that all our kids are taken care of. To us, all means all.’
However, District Superintendent Bob Blair has issued a blanket statement on the matter, saying the district is ‘unable to discuss confidential student matters’.
Blair said that the ‘district takes all allegations of discrimination of any kind seriously and will respond meaningfully to any report of discrimination’, adding that, ‘all such complaints are promptly investigated’.