An award-winning Duval Schools teacher with honors from then-governor Rick Scott refused to abide by a transgender teenager’s pronouns, prompting school-wide training and an apology to his boss. But that same week — and for the rest of the school year — he continued posting bigoted memes mocking the LGBTQ community.
Weeks before the start of this school year, Cesar — a sophomore at Sandalwood High School — anxiously emailed all of her new teachers, according to WJCT News partner The Florida Times-Union.
The 15-year-old, whose full name the Times-Union isn't using to protect her identity, is transgender. She wrote her incoming teachers to let them know her chosen name and pronouns, since the class roster would say something else.
But her math teacher, Thomas Caggiano, wasn’t having it. He refused to honor Cesar’s pronouns, telling her if she didn’t like it, to switch classes — which is exactly what she did.
Outside of school, his distaste for those who identify as transgender and others in the LGBTQ community isn’t a secret, either. To this day, he publicly shares degrading memes on his personal Facebook page.
Now, as the school year wraps up, he’s still teaching. Duval County Public Schools launched an inquiry into Caggiano shortly after the Times-Union shared some of his transphobic, xenophobic and racist public social media posts.
Read the rest of this story at Jacksonville.com.
