Pinellas County, Florida school board candidate Erika Picard's campaign is going hard on the non-existent issue of students at her day job as a guidance counselor at Palm Harbor University HS in the district asking her for kitty litter boxes in the restrooms, the Tampa Bay Times reports.
"When you hear about kids identifying as whatever, and we're now accommodating them with a kitty litter box in the bathroom, that's a problem," Picard told voters gathered at a candidate forum hosted by the North County Council on Monday, adding "And I have actually talked to families that have had that happen in their kids' classroom. It's insanity. It's crazy, right? And I didn't make that up. This is a family that actually had this happen to them in [neighboring] Hillsborough County schools."
Asked for actual evidence of kitty litter box requests and/or usage, Picard told the Times she "would love to give you names of the family I spoke with at the First Responders event in March. However, I never wrote their names down, nor did I ask them exactly what school it was at. They just said it was a Hillsborough County school." Seems like she should have written it down. "I believe there are things that happen in schools that are not always shared with the district level officials, which is exactly why we need someone working on our board that has recent boots on the ground experience in our schools, especially post COVID," she continued in the email to the Times.
We were under the impression that the whole entire "litter boxes for furry children identifying as cats" thing had kind of faded in 2022 and the closest report of it being real was the Colorado school district that suffered the 1999 Columbine massacre had begun keeping sacks of litter with buckets in classrooms for younger children to use in case of an extended active shooter lockdown.
Meaning that the one known instance of what they think is schools accommodating "furries" is a actually a tragic consequence of their unwillingness to address gun violence in any meaningful way.