11 May 2021 The superintendent of the Bellingham School District in the state of Washington responded to parents’ reactions to the report last week that a first-grade teacher read a transgender book to her young students, by defending his district’s practice of “reading diverse books and learning about all kinds of lives” as “consistent with our values in our strategic plan, The Bellingham Promise.” In his response message, Superintendent Greg Baker did not appear to address parents’ concerns their alarm was ignored, but instead complained the national attention to the reading of I Am Jazz to first-graders, is “prompting hate speech and harassment based on our values as a district and our commitment to equitable, diverse and inclusive education.”