Hours before Saturday’s pride parade celebrating equality and diversity, a rainbow flag was cut down from the flagpole of an Edmonton school.

Edmonton Public Schools said the flag was put up on Friday at Lillian Osborne High School, and police are now investigating after someone cut it down Saturday morning.

“We’re really disappointed, obviously,” Edmonton Public Schools spokesperson Carrie Rosa told CTV News. “We’re gonna do our best to ensure all of our students are still included.

“We wanna celebrate the diversity and inclusion of our kids and make sure that everybody feels safe in our schools, so we’re gonna do our best this week to ensure that all of our kids feel included, they feel safe, and also aware of what happened,” Rosa said.

 

 

Pride supporters rallied around after the flag was cut down and offered the school multiple rainbow flags, including Pride Festival organizers and Edmonton Whitemud MLA Bob Turner.

 

“We’ve had a number of really generous, great offers to provide us with an additional flag that can be flown at our school.” Rosa said. “We’re really grateful for that. It does show that our community really supports all of our kids. It shows that they’re here to celebrate them, and it shows that they’re doing their best to make sure that all of our kids feel really great about the school that they’re going to.”

 

With files from Jeremy Thompson