Meridian, Idaho

Sixth-grade history teachers don’t usually attract national attention. Sarah Inama did after her principal and vice principal paid an unexpected visit to her classroom in early February. They had come to discuss a pair of signs she had placed on the wall. One said: “Everyone is welcome here.” The other sign went further, declaring that “everyone in this room is important, accepted, respected, encouraged, valued and equal.” Inama was directed to remove both signs. The problem, she was told, was that they violated a school district decree that all classroom decorations be “content-neutral” and respectful of the views of all students and parents.

Her first reaction was to grudgingly take the signs down as ordered. After mulling it over for a few days, she changed her mind. “I told my husband, ‘I have to put that sign back up,’” Inama said in an interview with USA Today. She proceeded to do just that, emailing her principal to alert him.

From there the dispute escalated, leading to a meeting in which school district officials sought to provide Inama with “further clarification and support” and to “discuss concerns about the poster and how it violates Policy 401.20.” In her defense, Inama argued that it was important for her students to know that racism was wrong. In her mind, the only alternative to a message of inclusion, she said, was one of exclusion. She pointed out that the two signs had been hanging in her classroom for five years, raising no objection that she knew of. One of the district officials replied that, as Inama recalled his words, “the political environment ebbs and flows, and what might be controversial now might not have been controversial three, six, nine months ago, and we have to follow that.”

Inama was given until the end of the school year to comply or face disciplinary action. During that period, her cause attracted wide support among Idahoans young and old. Some of Inama’s backers began inscribing the “Everyone is welcome here” message on sidewalks and parking lots outside schools as well as the district offices. But her superiors were unmoved. A week before the deadline, Inama submitted her resignation. “I cannot align myself nor be complicit with the exclusionary views and decisions of the administration,” she wrote. “It is deeply troubling that the people running this district and school have allowed a welcoming and inclusive message for my students to be considered controversial, political, and, worst of all, an opinion.”

Date Posted: 8/1/25