Orlando school's boys-only STEM event prompts protest petition
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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 wasn’t 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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