Portland, OR. — Portland Public Schools opened a welcome-back video for the 2026-27 school year with longtime Portland drag performer Poison Waters, bringing a figure closely associated with LGBTQ advocacy into one of the district’s first public messages of the new academic year.
In the video posted on Facebook, Waters appears in drag and wishes students and employees a successful school year.
“I’m here to wish you all a successful 2026-2027 school year and to thank all the amazing principals, teachers, and staff for your dedication to your students and their learning,” Waters says in the video. Waters tells viewers that despite the “hustle and bustle,” the school community should remember that “together we rise with excellence and purpose.” The video also includes messages from other Portland-area figures, including U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley and U.S. Rep. Maxine Dexter.
Waters, also known as Kevin Cook, has been a prominent part of Portland’s drag and LGBTQ community for nearly four decades. A 2025 Portland State University profile of Waters describes Waters as a performer, advocate and educator whose career developed alongside activism during the AIDS crisis. Portland State awarded Waters an honorary doctorate in recognition of that work.
Waters has explicitly connected drag with political and cultural advocacy. In the Portland State profile, Waters said, “The very essence of what we do is activism,” while discussing the historic role of drag performers in LGBTQ causes and contemporary political disputes over LGBTQ issues.
The inclusion of Waters in a public school district’s back-to-school message comes as drag performances involving children and broader questions about gender identity in K-12 education have become politically contentious nationally.
Supporters of exposing children to drag and LGBTQ themes frequently frame such programs as exercises in inclusion, creativity and acceptance of people who do not conform to traditional gender expectations. Critics argue that drag is an adult entertainment tradition with ideological associations involving gender and sexuality that public schools should either avoid or leave to parents to introduce.
That debate is reflected in academic literature advocating for the use of drag in education. A 2021 article published in Curriculum Inquiry, written by Harper Keenan and drag performer Lil Miss Hot Mess, examines Drag Queen Story Hour as a form of what the authors call “drag pedagogy.” The article argues that drag programs can extend “queer pedagogy” into early childhood education and identifies play, aesthetic transformation, strategic defiance and other concepts as elements of that approach. It encourages incorporating drag and performative and lifestyle elements into the classroom, for example:
For example, Lil Miss Hot Mess’s(2020) picture book The Hips on the Drag Queen Go Swish, Swish, Swish encourages kids to move their hips in ways often coded as effeminate. This not only breaks the taboo of acting effeminate or identifying with queer figures, but also opens space for children to study drag as a source of creative inspiration.
The authors explicitly describe the concept as going beyond simply teaching children about LGBT people, writing that drag pedagogy concerns what they characterize as “living queerly.” The article presents that objective favorably; it does not purport to represent a consensus among educators or parents about the appropriate role of drag in schools.
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PPS policy goes beyond the welcome-back video
The appearance also occurs within an established Portland Public Schools policy framework addressing gender identity and LGBTQ inclusion.
The district’s Transgender, Nonbinary and Gender Expansive Students administrative directive states that its purpose is to ensure transgender, nonbinary and gender-expansive students are fully included in school communities and able to participate without discrimination.
PPS requires annual professional development for school and district employees dealing specifically with transgender, nonbinary and gender-expansive students. The directive says training should cover gender identity, gender expression and gender diversity in children and adolescents, communication with students and caregivers, bullying prevention and classroom practices and curriculum that educators can use to create a more “gender-inclusive environment.” The policy specifically allows for children to change their first name, gender marker, and preferred name without a caregiver signature which aligns with ODE policy.
A student may change their first name, gender marker, and/or the name in the “preferred name” field in the SIS by submitting the Name Change/Gender Marker Change form to the front office staff in their school.
This form does not require a caregiver signature in keeping with ODE
guidance.
- Requested changes must be made within 24 hours of form
submission.- The form is to be kept in a confidential file on-site.
- Do not upload this form to the student’s cumulative file or the SI
The district also states that its K-12 comprehensive health curriculum must be medically accurate, developmentally appropriate and LGBTQ inclusive. PPS maintains a dedicated LGBTQ supports program and directs families and employees to Oregon Department of Education LGBTQ2SIA+ resources, its gender directive and related district materials.
For supporters, those policies represent an effort to protect students who identify as transgender or otherwise LGBTQ and to create schools in which students are less likely to experience bullying or exclusion. Opponents have raised questions about parental notification, scientific accuracy of the incorporation of gender-ideology, and the appropriateness of introducing gender-identity and sexual orientation as a part of school practice, and whether schools are moving from nondiscrimination into actively promoting contested ideas about gender.
Those disagreements are now part of a federal lawsuit involving the district.
PPS faces lawsuit over gender policies and parent speech
On Aug. 12, Portland mother Allison Roberts filed Roberts v. Portland Public Schools in U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon. She is represented by the Liberty Justice Center, a public-interest litigation organization that describes its work as focused on free speech, educational freedom and limits on government power.
According to the Liberty Justice Center’s description of the lawsuit, Roberts objected after her 11-year-old child was given an “identity flower” assignment that asked students to identify and discuss their gender. She also objected to gender-related messaging at Lewis Elementary School.
Roberts alleges that she was not given advance notice or an opportunity to opt her child out of the assignment. After she subsequently distributed a letter expressing her objections outside the school, the lawsuit alleges that PPS treated her actions as harassment, investigated her conduct and issued a one-year trespass order that prevented her from attending events at the school, including her son’s graduation.
The complaint additionally challenges district policies concerning gender-related instruction and student gender identity. According to the plaintiffs, those policies can allow certain LGBTQ-affirming lessons without advance parental notice and, under some circumstances, allow school personnel not to disclose a student’s asserted gender identity to parents.
Those are allegations and constitutional claims made by Roberts and her attorneys. The case remains pending, and the filing of a lawsuit does not establish that PPS violated Roberts’ constitutional rights.
The district’s policies, meanwhile, describe their purpose differently: preventing discrimination and ensuring transgender, nonbinary and gender-expansive students have access to school activities and supportive educational environments. PPS states more broadly that it prohibits discrimination based on characteristics including sex, sexual orientation, gender expression and gender identity.
Against that backdrop, putting Poison Waters at the beginning of the district’s 2026 welcome-back video is more than the appearance of a well-known Portland entertainer. Waters is a longtime LGBTQ activist who publicly describes drag as connected to activism, while PPS has formally incorporated gender inclusion into curriculum, employee training and student-support policy.
Whether that combination represents appropriate inclusion by a public school system or an unnecessary injection of disputed cultural and political issues into K-12 education remains part of a broader disagreement among parents, educators, activists and policymakers, one that Portland Public Schools is now confronting both politically and in federal court.
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