High school teacher lost her job for using student's chosen name. Brevard rallied around her

Yahoo

06-05-2025

Brevard has seen a flurry of protests since the start of April, with community members rallying outside Satellite High, packing a school board meeting and amassing nearly 55,000 signatures on a petition — all in an effort to reinstate a high school teacher whose contract wasn't renewed after she called a 17-year-old student by their chosen name without parental consent.
That teacher, Melissa Calhoun — the first known Florida teacher to suffer job loss due to a 2023 Florida parental rights law — has stayed quiet.
But her cause has been adopted by parents, students and others in the community, who find themselves at odds with the school board and school district officials who say they need to put parent rights first — and note that Calhoun violated the law.
"At the end of the day, parents are the ones that get to direct what happens," school board member Megan Wright said during the April 22 school board meeting. "Parental rights exist for a reason. They exist because of things that have happened around our state that are horrific and have caused major damage to families."
This particular case involved a senior who is also dual-enrolled at Eastern Florida State College and is set to graduate in May. The student was using a name that aligns with their gender identity, classmates said. It's not a name that their parent gave permission for the school to use.
Students gathered after school at Satellite High Thursday to protest that teacher Melissa Calhoun's contract was not renewed.
The parent reported the use of the student's chosen name to the district, according to Brevard Public Schools Spokesperson Janet Murnaghan. The parent has stayed silent.
So has Calhoun. Calhoun remains in her Satellite High classroom, finishing out this school year and preparing her students for AP Literature exams. Last year, her grade 12 AP Literature class had a pass rate of 83.1%, more than 10 percentage points above the district average for the same class and nearly eight points above the state average, according to data compiled by Tara Harris, BPS' assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction. Over the years, she's taught an estimated 3,000 students. Many of them and their parents have come to her defense.
"She really makes connections with her students, and she just really teaches life lessons," said Audrey Ciccone, a senior at Satellite High who's been in two of Calhoun's classes. "I think we're just running out of people that truly care about their students."
While many applauded Calhoun for focusing on the student, Brevard's Superintendent Mark Rendell disagreed.
"We contact parents when students misbehave or don't turn in assignments," he said in a statement sent to FLORIDA TODAY. "This student was questioning their identity, and we didn't contact the parents. In fact, we excluded the parents. That is unacceptable."
This case has drawn enormous attention in Brevard, and it's also received international attention, garnering coverage by publications including The Washington Post, People, The Independent, The Times of India and more.
Alan Nervig, the father of a teacher in Baltimore, said he always hoped his daughter would move back to live near him. When he brought up the idea to her, she laughed, he said.
"I always dreamed she'd come back here, but she never will," said Nervig, who attended the April 22 school board meeting. "You guys are now infamous nationally for this. And for this applicant pool that you have to get teachers from, you've just X'ed out at least two thirds of it, and you're going to have to pick from what's left over."
Law requires parental permission, doesn't address punishment
Calhoun's punishment comes three years after Florida began passing a slew of bills that conservatives lauded as pro-parental rights, with Democrats raising concerns that they targeted LGBTQ people and content in school classrooms.
It started in 2022 with House Bill 1557, also known as the "Parental Rights in Education" bill or to critics as the "Don't Say Gay" law. This law required school districts to create procedures for notifying parents of changes related to the student's wellbeing and banned classroom discussions about sexual orientation and gender identity through grade three.
The following year, the law was expanded to ban these discussions for all grade levels, with Florida's legislature also targeting the use of chosen names and pronouns.
In 2023, House Bill 1069 said no one at a public K-12 school could be required to refer to anyone by a preferred personal title or pronoun if "such a personal title or pronouns do not correspond to that person's sex." It also required that schools acknowledge sex as an "immutable biological trait and that it is false to ascribe" a pronoun that "does not correspond to such person's sex."
After the law was signed in May of that year, it was up to the Florida Board of Education to adopt rules to administer the guidelines laid out within it.
And they did: In the summer of 2023, they created rules that blocked classroom instruction regarding sexual orientation and gender except in select cases; required transgender students and staff to use the bathrooms and changing facilities that aligned with their sex assigned at birth in accordance with House Bill 1521, which segregates facilities based on sex at birth; and created a form for parents to sign if their child wished to go by any alternative to their legal name. While this applied to any deviation from a student's legal name, including nicknames, this was an effort, critics said, to remove the autonomy from trans students to go by a chosen name at school if they were closeted at home or had unsupportive parents.
And while the rule, titled the "Parental Authorization for Deviation from Student's Legal Name Form," doesn't lay out a punishment for an educator who defies the mandate, Rendell, with support from the school board, opted to not renew Calhoun's contract. The district noted that her teaching credentials would be under review with the state Department of Education due to the infraction.
The parent of the Satellite High student in question did not fill out such a form, according to Murnaghan, and Calhoun 'knowingly did not comply with state statute.'
"BPS supports parents' rights to be the primary decision-makers in their children's lives, and Florida law affirms their right to be informed," Murnaghan said.
Audrey Ciccone spoke about Satellite High School AP English teacher Melissa Calhoun's impact on her at a rally outside the Brevard school board meeting on April 22 in Viera. Calhoun's contact was not renewed for the 2025-26 school year.
It was a point board member John Thomas agreed with. But he also said he worried the district was acting too harshly, and during last week's school board meeting, he made a motion to retrain Calhoun and consider renewing her contract.
"This is not a case with a pending criminal charge," he said. "This is not a case of moral corruption. And no student was harmed, no child was put at risk. This is the case of poor judgment, a mistake, and like all of us, even good teachers are capable of making them."
Other members on the all-Republican board disagreed, emphasizing parental rights and the possibility that Calhoun's teaching credentials could be revoked by the state.
"I think it's worth upholding what the recommendation is and seeing what happens when the state looks at all the factors here of what was going on, and they come down and decide what they're going to do," Wright said.
School board member Katye Campbell had a similar viewpoint, adding that Calhoun could always come back to teach in Brevard if her credentials were upheld.
"It's Dr. Rendell's decision, and I just — I have a hesitation on that," she said, referring to Thomas' proposal. "We're not saying that she can't ever come back, but there's a pause on that. That is the way that it stands right now."
In an email Campbell has been sending to constituents who reached out to her about this issue, she also noted that this "was not a simple case of someone named Madison wanting to go by Maddie, for example, or a Nicholas wanting to go by Nic."
School Board Vice Chair Matt Susin offered next to no comment, simply saying, "I will support the superintendent and continue to do so."
While Thomas said no child had been harmed by Calhoun's actions, Board Chair Gene Trent challenged him on the assertion.
"You mentioned it didn't do any harm to the student," Trent said. "I think I would talk to the parent about that first."
The rest of the board killed the motion, with only Thomas voting in its favor.
Following the meeting, Rendell held firm on his position in a statement to FLORIDA TODAY.
"This is not a case of simply retraining a teacher," he said. "How do you retrain someone who knowingly and admittedly violated state law? She fully understood the law and made a conscious choice to violate it repeatedly. The teacher put her beliefs above the parents in this case."
'You are piercing a hole in our hearts'
Most issues at Brevard's school board meetings are split by political party. Republicans argue for more restrictions on books, while Democrats decry the banning of texts. Liberals bring up worries about having guns in schools through the guardian program, which allows district employees to be armed, while conservatives say firearms on the premise are the only way to stop a shooting.
But at the April 22 school board meeting, the diverse crowd of speakers was united. After two weeks of protesting and gathering signatures on a Change.org petition, more than 75 students, parents and community members rallied ahead of the meeting, with additional people congregating to pack the board room. The meeting stretched over five hours and had to be halted multiple times, with the board exiting the room as community members shouted that they weren't being heard and that their First Amendment rights were being violated.
All speakers but one, who commended the board for not renewing Calhoun's contract, either spoke in favor of keeping Calhoun on at Satellite High or addressed other issues.
Beau Culpepper, a veteran, former high school teacher and self-described Republican, compared Calhoun's actions to those of Jesus and called on educators to treat transgender students with love.
"If anything, I think we should be training teachers and teaching them more about trans kids and what their needs are and how to help them," he said, adding to the board that in "a hundred years from now, history will not be kind to you."
Bill Pearlman said the district's handling of the situation was "extreme."
"You say a law was violated," he said. "I argue that the law puts the wishes of a misguided parent over an emerging adult, and that is a misguided law."
Julia, a Satellite High student who spoke at a previous meeting about Calhoun, told the board that she and other students were hurt by their decision. As a current student in the district, she asked that FLORIDA TODAY only use her first name.
"You are piercing a hole in our hearts, in every student at Satellite High School," she said. "I was going to have her as a teacher next year."
And Tyler Weber, a 2022 graduate from BPS, worried about the hole Calhoun would leave behind for the students who felt safe with her.
"When I heard about what's been going on with Ms. Calhoun, my heart broke," Weber said. "I had teachers like her at (my school) who were a safe person to go to, who called me by my preferred name. ... It honestly sucks to see such great teachers like that leave."
Former school board member Jennifer Jenkins, the lone Democrat on Brevard's school board before the 2024 election, spoke ahead of the meeting at the rally and offered supportive words to Calhoun's student who went by a chosen name.
"To the student involved in all of this, you are respected, this is not your fault, you were not wrong for being affirmed, it was not a bad decision and nobody needs to be retrained," Jenkins said.
What happens next
It's not clear what will come next for Calhoun, her student and the community. Her teaching credentials are under review with the state, and depending on what determination they make, she may or may not be allowed to teach in Florida schools this upcoming school year.
The next school board meeting is scheduled for May 6.
"It is my hope that it will be recognized that I have presented a way that we can comply with the DOE, protect parental rights, while saving the career of a valued teacher," Thomas told FLORIDA TODAY via email when asked whether or not he had plans to raise the issue of reinstating Calhoun at future meetings. "I believe this has turned into an ideological battle with an unsuspecting teacher caught in the middle. We should be keeping our focus on what is best for the students, the parents, and Brevard Public Schools."
Thomas didn't say for sure whether or not he plans to bring the topic up at future meetings. With the motion failing to pass, he's worried about how other teachers may be punished in the future.
"While I was disappointed that the motion did not pass, my concern remains with the broader implications as we strive to protect parental rights," he said. "I am saddened for Ms. Calhoun, and I believe the decision not to renew her contract sets a concerning precedent for how similar situations may be handled in the future, one that may discourage fair, corrective approaches rooted in accountability and growth."
Anthony Colucci, president of Brevard Federation of Teachers, called Calhoun an "active member of her community" and praised her for continuing to "dedicate herself to her students."
"Brevard Public Schools issued a Letter of Reprimand to Ms. Calhoun for an alleged violation that was brought to her attention by her administration," Colucci said in an emailed statement to FLORIDA TODAY. "When they decided to also non-renew this highly effective rated teacher's contract, they issued a punishment that in our opinion doesn't fit the alleged violation. Ms. Calhoun is currently preparing her senior students to pass their college-level exams, and no students have been removed from her class. Our students are collateral damage if our community loses the phenomenal educator that Ms. Calhoun is."
Andrew Spar, president of Florida Education Association — the state's largest association of professional employees — said teachers must be allowed to connect with their students in order to teach effectively.
"When you have a teacher who is clearly as impactful as Melissa has been, it's because she connects to her students, and she is a genuine person, a caring person, and no teacher should get in trouble for doing their job at the high level that she's doing her job," Spar said.
But Gov. Ron DeSantis, who championed the law under which Calhoun is being reprimanded, said he supported the district's decision in an April 23 interview with Orlando's WKMG Channel 6 News.
"Here's the thing: Our schools should be about education, not indoctrination. Some of these woke items don't have a place in education," he told the news station. "Most parents do not want to send their kid to elementary school and have them be taught things like 'transgender' and 'gender fluidity.' It's just not appropriate. So I think Florida's really stood on the side of parents."
Finch Walker is the education reporter at FLORIDA TODAY. Contact Walker at [e-mail]. X: @_finchwalker.
This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Teacher used a student's chosen name and lost her job. Brevard fought back