KINGS MILLS, Ohio —It’s been a hot topic — how to be more inclusive in school curriculum, and after the events of the past year, many school districts are working to be more diverse and inclusive in different ways.
What You Need To Know
- For many school districts, they are working to create a more inclusive community and curriculum
- At Kings Local School district, they’ve created a Diversity and Inclusion Task Force to help
- Just this spring, Annie Wise and Riley Loudermilk were voted by their peers to be the first lesbian couple voted prom king and queen
- The couple hopes it sparks more change in the district
For Riley Loudermilk and Annie Wise, being their school’s first-ever lesbian prom king and queen this spring was something they hoped for.
“Telling our other friends ‘vote for us, it’s possible,'” Loudermilk said. “We wanted to see if we can get two girls on the court.”
The two graduated seniors both attended Kings High School.
“I’ve heard from other high schools of this happening but our school has never done anything like this before and especially where we live, it felt super empowering that something like this could happen,” Loudermilk said.
When the couple won, Wise said she couldn’t believe it.
“When we did win, it was really shocking especially because like Riley said before the area is really conservative, not really our school, but the area is, so I didn’t think that people would be as open to the change,” Wise said.
The school district says the student-led decision helped create a safer space for students that may have felt alone.
“They kind of paved the way for these other students who feel like they’re the only ones,” Dawn Gould, the community relations coordinator for Kings Local Schools, said. “That’s really important for us as a district to make sure that kids do feel like they’re important no matter what they stand for, no matter what they do. We’re all individuals and we want to celebrate the individuality of our students.”
Kings Local School district is hoping this wasn’t the last of many changes to include a more diverse community and curriculum.
“We’re doing a complete curriculum review so we can make sure that things are in place so we are able to be intentional about providing resources,” Gould said.
For Loudermilk and Wise, as they head off to college this fall, they hope they’ve inspired some change in the school district they grew up in.
“For a long time after I came out at Kings, I didn’t know if people were accepting or loving of me,” Wise said. “But after they started defending us, I realized that we really were loved.”
They say while they were supported by their teachers and most of their classmates, they believe there’s still room for improvement in the district.
“I think a reason why so many kids were scared of coming out or scared of being themselves at school is because of that,” Wise said. “There’s not a lot of diversity, we’re in a very white area, very conservative area, not a lot of representation for minorities, so I think there should be a lot more inclusivity in our school.”
