Even though the school was started as a LGBTQ+ safe space they had to remove anything affirming the LGBTQ+ people. The goal of the republican right is to erase LGBTQ+ people from the public society. They don’t want us seen, they do not want us talked about. They especially don’t want kids to understand they can be themselves if they are not straight or cis. They want kids to feel they must fit the mold of straight and cis only. If you feel differently you must hide it and live miserably to make the snowflake Christian nationalist right feel comfortable. This will backfire on them. Just as the LGBTQ+ overcame the full force of the right’s bigotry once we can do it again. We have moved far too toward equality to let them push us from society again. The young people will not accept it nor tolerate the regression of freedoms to make a few bigots feel comfortable with the world around them. They also know that intolerant maga driven my the cult of tRump won’t last forever. Hugs
“We have had rainbows in our building because we are affirming to all people, and at some point our mission statement included a segment that said ‘We are affirming to LGBTQ people,’ but we have taken that out.”
Before the vote Wednesday, she said the school painted over rainbow colors and designs and replaced maps with ones that had a “Gulf of America” label. They revised the logo and reviewed textbooks and other documents.
Months after its contract was threatened over a rainbow mural and a map labeling the Gulf of Mexico, an Alabama charter school will stay open.
The state charter commission voted Wednesday to renew Magic City Acceptance Academy’s contract, allowing the school to operate for five more years. The school and its leaders came under fire this spring for allegedly violating aspects of Alabama’s new anti-DEI law, which prohibits so-called “divisive concepts” and other diversity and inclusion programming in public schools and colleges.
“I’ll say the thing that we’re all thinking,” said Karen Musgrove, the school’s CEO, after being pressed by one commissioner to address the “monster in the room.”
“We have had rainbows in our building because we are affirming to all people, and at some point our mission statement included a segment that said ‘We are affirming to LGBTQ people,’ but we have taken that out.”
“We’re affirming to all people. We’re affirming to our Black students. We’re affirming to our Hispanic students. We’re affirming to our LGBTQ students, which are in every school in the state.”
Magic City Acceptance Academy opened in 2021 in an effort to provide a supportive learning environment for LGBTQ students and other at-risk populations. Students and staff say they built a welcoming community in the Birmingham-area school, despite a firestorm of political backlash over the years.
In a plea to commissioners, one parent said “everything changed” for her son after enrolling at MCAA. He stopped skipping class, vaping and fighting, and he’s now excelling in college-level courses.
“Renewing Magic City’s charter means continuing to change lives like my son’s,” she said. “It means giving more kids the chance to discover their potential and their purpose.”
After a brief debate, the commission ultimately renewed the charter – on the condition that it agreed to maintain “strict adherence throughout its shorter term to Alabama laws, specifically including, without limitation, Alabama Code 41190,” the state’s “divisive concepts” law. If it fails to comply, Magic City could be subject to sanctions, said Lane Knight, the commission’s lawyer.
“They’ve got the financial support, they’ve got a good program, they’ve got the leadership,” said commission member Charles Knight. “And again, we all agree that we’re trying to create environments where students are educated, and obviously they’re doing a good job of that.”
Recent changes
According to emails obtained by AL.com, school officials contacted the charter commission in early 2025, just days after 1819 News ran an article claiming the school was violating the law by hosting a “radical LGBTQ+ anti-America author” and promoting diversity, equity and inclusion in its handbook.
Musgrove reached out to the commission’s director, Logan Searcy, for advice on January 24. She sent Searcy changes to the school’s mission statement a week later.
Between February and March, 1819 published a handful of articles about the school. Republican lawmakers threatened its funding and called for a state investigation.
In early February, the commission paid the school another visit.
“The goal here is to report our diligence in monitoring the school to hopefully alleviate concerns at renewal time,” the commission’s financial specialist, Douglas Riley, wrote to Principal Patton Furman on Feb. 4. “I suspect you will see much more attention from the Commission this spring with that goal in mind. Please understand the spirit in which these efforts are intended, we want to identify and fix problems before they grow into something serious.”
He wrote to school leaders again after the visit: “Y’all are making some strong moves and I hope we can put the recent press behind us and have a smooth renewal process later this year.”
That same day, the commission sent the school a letter, noting that it had received “various reports” that the school’s curricula and programming violated the new law.
Searcy visited the school, along with commission member Cynthia McCarty, on Feb. 20, according to emails.
On March 6, Musgrove issued a lengthy response to the commission’s letter, claiming that leaders had already taken steps to make changes to decor and programming, and that they had not received any negative feedback after members’ visits to the school.
Before the vote Wednesday, she said the school painted over rainbow colors and designs and replaced maps with ones that had a “Gulf of America” label. They revised the logo and reviewed textbooks and other documents.
“We don’t see ourselves as being divisive,” she said. “Because we did exactly what was asked of us.”
A new outlook
It is rare for an Alabama charter school to close down after its initial contract is granted. If the commission has any concerns about a school’s viability, they may issue a shortened two- or three-year contract.
The commission originally suggested a three-year contract for Magic City, but voted to approve a standard five-year one after some pushback.
With the greenlight from the commission, school officials plan to start work immediately on a new building, which will feature a large theater, band room and expanded mental health resources.
It plans to eventually serve up to 500 students.
“We are going to make you proud,” Musgrove told the commission. “We’re doing amazing things, and we want you to be a part of that relationship.”
The commission also approved a five-year extension for LEAD Academy in Montgomery and a three-year extension for Breakthrough Academy in Perry County.
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Rebecca Griesbach
Rebecca Griesbach is a data reporter at AL.com, covering education and other issues across the state. She joined the newsroom in 2021 as a founding member of the Alabama Education Lab and a Report for America… more
This is entirely about erasing the LGBTQ+ community from society. They teach and preach hate about us then use that acts of violence and vandalism to claim the “public” is against the LGBTQ+ representation. Why we generate such hate for just living our lives openly like they do is beyond my understanding. The people pushing hardest to erase the LGBTQ+ have only misunderstood texts in their holy book written over centuries in different cultures and languages. Yet they read it as if the words they are reading mean the same now or are correctly translated. And still that doesn’t give them the right to remove the LGBTQ+ from the public square and teach hate against us. The reasons given by the transportation secretary are meaningless garbage and complete untrue. Hugs
In a literal erasure of LGBTQ+ identity in South Florida, the city of Boynton Beach has complied with recent orders from Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and the Trump administration to eliminate a rainbow crosswalk in the beachside city.
Video reveals a road crew painting over the once-colorful intersection at East Ocean Avenue and Southeast First Street on Wednesday morning. It’s now painted black.
Boynton Beach has “removed the inclusionary-painted intersection on the 100 block of East Ocean Avenue to ensure full compliance with state and federal transportation mandates and address safety concerns,” a statement from the city read. “The decision follows recent guidance from the U.S. Transportation Secretary and the Florida Department of Transportation.”
The Pride commemoration was first unveiled in June 2021.
The rainbow intersection has been vandalized before. During Pride month in 2023, surveillance video captured a motorcyclist burning out over the mural, leaving black tread marks across it. He then stopped to record the damage he caused.
The Pride erasure comes just days after a coordinated campaign by the Florida governor and the federal Transportation Department to remove rainbow intersections across the state.
On July 1, former Road Rules reality star and current Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy issued a social media edict to all U.S. governors to remove the crosswalk art.
“Taxpayers expect their dollars to fund safe streets, not rainbow crosswalks,” Duffy declared. “Political banners have no place on public roads. I’m reminding recipients of @USDOT roadway funding that it’s limited to features advancing safety, and nothing else. It’s that simple.”
In the order and subsequent interviews, Duffy implies the Pride crosswalks are causing chaos on the roads and have led to traffic fatalities.
“Far too many Americans die each year to traffic fatalities to take our eye off the ball,” Duffy told the far-right Daily Signal.
“Roads are for safety,” he said somewhat incongruously, “not political messages or artwork.”
Duffy didn’t specify what percentage of the 39,345 traffic deaths in the U.S. in 2024 were caused by rainbow crosswalks.
Other cities in South Florida with rainbow intersections, including Delray Beach, Fort Lauderdale, and West Palm Beach, face the same state and federal mandates. It wasn’t immediately clear whether or how they would comply.
Other Pride crosswalks in the state have also been subject to vandalism, some repeatedly.
Florida Transportation Secretary Jared Perdue enthusiastically endorsed the federal mandate the day after it was issued.
“Florida’s proactive efforts to ensure we keep our transportation facilities free & clear of political ideologies were cemented into law by @GovRonDeSantis,” Perdue posted to socials. “Great to now have our federal partners also aligned behind this same common-sense policy.”
Rand Hoch, president of the Palm Beach County Human Rights Council, called the orders “blackmail”.
“This is just another example of the president and the governor blackmailing local governments by telling them they’re going to withhold funding so they can try to publicly erase the LGBTQ+ community,” he told the Sun-Sentinel. “This seems to be a priority of these administrations.”
Despite the public erasure, Hoch, who was present at the 2021 unveiling of the Boynton Beach Pride intersection, said LGBTQ+ people “are not going to disappear.”
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rgriesbach@al.com
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