By Megan Tagami, Civil Beat
Published: Nov. 10, 2025
History teacher Nicole Lasko encourages her students to watch the news and discuss current events, reminding them of the importance of becoming informed citizens at Kūlanihākoʻi High School on Maui. But last year, she said, a student went too far when he made rude comments about immigrants in her class, and she later pulled him aside to explain how he could express himself more respectfully in the future.
Lasko was taken aback when the student’s parents complained about the conversation she had with their son. They accused her of being anti-conservative and anti-American, she said, even though she stays politically neutral in her classes and encourages students to develop their own informed opinions.
“This wasn’t about trying to think a certain way at all, it was, ‘let’s not use these particular words to express your opinion,’” Lasko said. “I just never had a parent come back and get so upset about this kind of thing.”
Politics and current events have always been challenging topics for teachers to navigate, but Hawaiʻi educators say they’ve faced new levels of uncertainty and worry over the past year when it comes to discussing potentially controversial issues with their students.
In one high-profile incident this fall, Moanalua Middle School administrators told teacher Heather Strait to shut down discussions about controversial issues after students briefly brought up conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s death in a social studies lesson. The incident prompted a conservative legal organization to send a letter to the Hawaiʻi Department of Education last month, demanding that the school rescind its guidance and allow students to have open discussions in class.
“Teachers are going to be confused if they get orders like this,” said Nathan Moelker, an American Center for Law and Justice lawyer who wrote the letter to the DOE. “These are rules that don’t really make much sense and are difficult to comply with.”
Moanalua Middle School withdrew its memo to Strait on Thursday, but teachers and free speech advocates say DOE is still publishing unclear guidance on how educators should handle controversial issues. In some cases, teachers are shying away from discussing certain current events altogether, raising concerns across the political spectrum that DOE’s instructions have a chilling effect on student learning and free speech in schools.
An annual memo from Superintendent Keith Hayashi instructs teachers to seek their principals’ approval before covering potentially controversial issues in class and send home letters alerting parents of these lessons beforehand. But the memo contains no definitions or explanations of how teachers should identify these controversial issues in advance.
“It’s very concerning, it seems very onerous, it’s extremely vague,” said Wookie Kim, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Hawaiʻi. “It opens the door to arbitrary enforcement.”
Discouraging Debate
At Hilo Intermediate School, teacher Aaron Kubo said he tries to make his social studies classes more engaging by connecting historical events to what’s happening in real time. But, he said, he needs to be careful to keep conversations balanced and fair, and he tries to avoid debates about controversial topics that aren’t focused on the facts and can spiral out of control.
“The past nine months have been very different than it has been in the past 20 years of my teaching,” Kubo said, adding that he encourages students to do their own research on current events and come to their own conclusions based on reliable sources and facts.
This fall, dozens of districts disciplined or fired educators for their social media posts about Kirk’s assassination. Following the incident, the Hawaiʻi teachers’ union said it hadn’t received any reports of local schools disciplining staff for comments or posts about Kirk, but it urged members to understand their rights and protections as educators.
At Moanalua Middle School, students in Strait’s class brought up Kirk’s death in a discussion about hate speech, but Strait didn’t go into detail about the incident and quickly moved on with her lesson, according to the ACLJ demand letter.
But after a parent complained, administrators sent Strait a memo instructing her to immediately stop conversations about controversial issues that haven’t been pre-approved. The principal also told her that she could teach about the First Amendment as it relates to the country’s founding, but not in a modern context, according to the letter.
The education department withdrew its memo to Strait and said Moanalua Middle School had not taken any disciplinary action against her, according to the state superintendent’s response to the ACLJ. The department’s statewide guidance on how teachers should deal with potentially controversial issues in their classes still holds, Hayashi said in Thursday’s letter.
Moanalua Middle School Principal Komarey Moss did not respond to requests for comment.
Moelker said DOE’s decision to withdraw its letter to Strait was a win for teachers’ free speech rights. Still, he said, educators and principals may need additional clarity around handling controversial issues to prevent similar incidents from happening in the future.
More than 50 years ago, the Board of Education emphasized that controversial discussions were a normal part of student learning, passing a policy requiring teachers to include diverse perspectives in their lessons and help students make fact-based judgments.
But the DOE seems to be moving in the opposite direction, Kim said, requiring educators to receive administrators’ approval for teaching “potentially controversial matters” without explaining what these issues could be. Vague or poorly defined policies can violate the free speech rights of students and teachers by discouraging them from discussing certain issues altogether, he said.
“This really opens the door to chilling what occurs in the classroom,” he said.
DOE Communications Director Nanea Ching said schools allow teachers to have classroom discussions around controversial issues and current events. The department also provides teachers with resources on how to create safe learning environments, allowing students to have difficult or emotionally charged conversations, she said.
More Guidance Needed
When teachers aren’t sure how to navigate difficult conversations around politics or current events, it could prevent educators and students from talking about these issues altogether, said Colin Moore, a political scientist at the University of Hawaiʻi Mānoa. Civic education is particularly important in schools at this time, he said, since students heavily rely on social media for their news and may only see the most polarized opinions represented online.
“I think that the sort of news that younger people are being exposed to are the most extreme interpretations of current events,” Moore said.
It would be difficult for DOE to develop a comprehensive list of controversial topics that require administrative approval or should be avoided in schools, said Amber Makiau, a College of Education specialist at UH Mānoa. A better approach would be helping teachers understand how they can create a classroom culture where kids feel comfortable asking questions and discussing divisive issues in a respectful way, she said.
Even before this year, teachers have said they want to prioritize civic education in their classes but aren’t sure where to start. In a survey of DOE educators last year, roughly half of the respondents said they had insufficient or outdated resources to help them teach civic education. Over 80% said they rarely or never attended professional development for the subject.
Lawmakers have attempted to provide more guidance to schools on teaching controversial issues and civic education, but past efforts have fallen short.
One bill introduced in 2010 defined potentially controversial issues as those which “generate opposing points of view or considerable discomfort or agitation” and asked the BOE to create penalties for teachers who failed to notify parents when their lessons would cover divisive topics.
The bill failed to pass after facing strong opposition from the DOE and civic engagement groups, who argued the definition of controversial issues was too broad and the proposal would stifle critical thinking in schools.
“The Legislature should find ways to foster and encourage students to listen to and evaluate opposing points of view, and should not attempt to sanitize classroom discussions through measures like SB 2790,” the ACLU of Hawaiʻi said in its written testimony.
More recently, a bill introduced last session would have provided more funding for expanding civic education in public schools and providing more professional development to social studies teachers. The bill received support from the DOE and educational advocacy groups but failed to pass.
BOE Chair Roy Takumi said the board may consider updating its policy around controversial issues in the future. It would be difficult for the board to identify every controversial issue that could come up in schools, he said, but he would be open to revising the policy to allow parents to identify what topics they wouldn’t want their kids exposed to in schools.
In this case, Takumi said, the responsibility would fall on parents to notify the schools when they would want their child removed from certain lessons, rather than asking teachers to anticipate every controversial topic that could come up in their instruction.
On Maui, Lasko said covering sensitive topics like immigration or national politics can be a challenge, but it’s important for her students to see her class as a safe space to have hard discussions. Some of her students are only months away from turning 18 and being able to vote, she said, and she wants to ensure they’re well-informed citizens who understand how current events affect their daily lives.
“If we’re not going to talk about it in social studies,” she said, “when are they going to talk about it?”