Teachers quit over anti-gay policy at Christian high school
SHORELINE — When students returned to the classrooms at King’s High School here last week, something was missing.
Several beloved teachers were no longer there. At least five either felt pushed out or voluntarily quit the private, interdenominational Christian school over summer break in protest of an administrative mandate that they perceived as requiring them to disavow same-sex relationships, both on the job and in their personal lives — and they objected to anti-gay language from Jacinta Tegman, the new leader of King’s parent organization, CRISTA Ministries.
In an interview Friday, administrators at CRISTA and King’s said that families had unenrolled two students in response to what they described not as a new but clarified stance.
“This may not be the place for everybody,” Tegman said. “So if it’s not, we just want to make that clear so people can make a good decision whether they want to stay.”
The school’s public-facing materials tread a careful line: While they mostly don’t mention LGBTQ+ issues explicitly, they do make allusions to things like “the historical biblical standards of morality” or state clearly that the ministries believe “the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments” are “inerrant in their original writings” and “of supreme and final authority.”
Even before the departures over summer, some faculty members had decided to leave King’s amid what they described as a growing tension over how inclusive the school culture should be. Administrators disputed the number of departures — which Tegman said did not register as “earthquake level” — and denied that they asked any teachers to leave, quietly.
Some did sign nondisclosure agreements in order to receive severance pay — a customary practice at King’s, according to Tegman.
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