Orlando school's boys-only STEM event prompts protest petition
AAUW
Orlando school's boys-only STEM event prompts protest petition
Audubon Park Elementary School's planned mother & son night of fun has prompted a protest petition and complaints from parents because the science-and-technology event was advertised for boys only.
Orlando resident Helena Zubkow started the don't ban girls from STEM night petition Monday night after hearing about the Nov. 13 event from a friend, who has two boys at Audubon Park.
The online petition, at Change.org, had more than 750 signatures by Tuesday night.
Zubkow said as a woman in a tech field she was outraged that a school PTA would hold an event to showcase awesome experiments in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, the so-called STEM fields, and then exclude girls.
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School and PTA officials responded Tuesday by saying their intent wasnt to exclude girls. Instead, they wanted to create something fun for mothers and sons after the PTA's successful father-daughter sweetheart dance last school year, an event planned again this school year.
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(Mother of 2 boys This is a giant leap in the wrong direction, and it leaves me torn, she wrote to the principal. I don't want to support this kind of discriminatory event, but I know my boys are going to beg to go to it, because it sounds like it's going to be really fun.
STEM is for everyone
And let's face it this is 2015, not 1955. There is no reason to exclude half the school from what sounds like will be an amazing learning opportunity.
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