A teacher hosted drag queens dancing highly inappropriately at a school in Pennslyvania and allegedly encouraged the kids to bring money to “tip” the dancers, and it was all captured on video. When the parents discovered this went on without their consent, they went to war.
A Pennsylvania school district in Lancaster came under fire for a drag show hosted by a teacher after hours on school property. The show featured several scantily clad drag queens performing lewd dance moves that would be inappropriate for most adults, let alone high school students. The teacher who organized the event is Kelly Tyson, who is also a co-advisor of the Gay Sexuality Alliance (GSA) club.
Video footage shared with The Daily Wire shows multiple drag queens performing lewd dances in front of students. The after-school event provoked shock from parents who were not aware of the event until after it had occurred. “Our concern is that grown men entered our high school with or without background checks,” Meridith Hilt, a mother of two children, told reporters. “They were dressed scantily and performed in a provocative, sexualized manner for minor children.”
The concerned parent described what she saw. “The outfits, exposed butt cheeks, and very tight leotards with a visible bulge are not what I expected. And the dancing itself was wildly inappropriate for children,” she said. “Most who defended the drag show reversed their opinion when they saw the video.”
Another mother condemned Tyson for allegedly asking children to bring “cash to tip the queens” and providing social media handles for the performers containing posts that included “a video where they say ‘sex’ repeatedly while pretending to lick their boobs and performing oral sex, in addition to imitating doing cocaine.”
In a social media post, Kelly Tyson included pictures of the drag queens and appeared to say the event had been hosted twice before. “I don’t know how to explain the sheer joy I feel in my bones when these queens come take time out of their busy schedules to perform for us (year 3!) and to be with my students,” the post said.
“As GSA co-advisor and a queer teacher, it makes me emotional to think of this space we have created. I would have loved nothing more than to have a space like they have, an opportunity to attend their own drag show,” Tyson’s post said. News of the drag queen event spread like wildfire throughout the community, and that’s when parents and concerned citizens went to war against the school board.
The room which held the school board meeting was overflowing with irate citizens, and parent Meredith Hilt’s comments were met with overwhelming applause. “Some of you have tried to make us feel insignificant,” Hilt told the school board. “Our concerns have been 100% validated … they are actively grooming children.”
Crowds of people supporting Kelly Tyson, the LBGTQ teacher and organizer of the event, arrived early at the meeting, which was attended by several hundred community members both virtually and in person. The demonstrators waved rainbow flags outside the district’s administrative building as passing vehicles honked in support.
Richard Boyer, one of the parent organizers and a disabled veteran who served in the United States Army for 20 years, emphasized that no one “hates” the LBGTQ community and told members to distinguish between “criticism” and “hate.”
Stacy Hernandez, a mother of three, also weighed in. “I first found out about this video and drag show from a video one of the school kids put out,” she said. “I then asked my children about it, and they were disgusted and could not believe they would do something like that at their school,” she added. “Our schools are overreaching and indoctrinating our children, which has created confusion and stress in the most vulnerable. It’s a form of child abuse, and it’s about indecency in our schools and lack of leadership.”
Additionally, the parent’s campaign for accountability caused the school board to take action. Hempfield School Board President Grant Keener shared a statement from the board, which confirmed that an investigation into the drag queen event is “ongoing” in an “appropriate and affirming way.” He also announced that two individuals beyond teacher Kelly Tyson had been placed on administrative leave.
Teachers are responsible for educating students. With that privilege comes a level of trust that they will not harm students. However, some teachers take advantage of their positions and use their authority to impose their beliefs on students and align them with their ideologies. That’s when it’s up to the parents to rein them in and assert the God-given right as the final authority in their children’s lives.
