Wake teacher who wore tutu for spirit week says it was a joke, mom calls it 'sexualizing'

The Martin Middle School teacher who wore a tutu last year during a spirit day says it was a joke.

He sent statements to WRAL News on Wednesday, a day after several members of Moms for Liberty — a group that describes itself as defending parental rights — complained to the school board about his behavior. That was a day after they complained on social media about the teacher, tagging prominent accounts.

A post on the Wake Moms For Liberty page on X shows two photos: a seventh-grade Martin Middle school teacher in a tutu and a letter detailing why that wasn’t grounds to transfer a student out of his class.

“A male teacher working with minors in this age group should not be wearing a skirt,” Jessica Lewis, vice chairwoman of the group, told the school board Tuesday. “This is a distraction from the learning process.”

Lewis’s daughter is in the teacher’s class, though she wasn’t when the teacher wore the tutu in October 2023.

Lewis told Wake County school board members Tuesday that her daughter felt unsafe in class after seeing the photo.

The teacher, Adam Chu, wore the knee-length tutu over a pair of shorts during a spirit day, themed “Barbenheimer.” It was a nod to the movies “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer,” which were released on the same day.

The school system says no students or parents brought concerns to administration after the spirit day, until Lewis went to the principal earlier this month.

According to the letter posted on social media, Lewis met with the principal last week. Lewis asked to have her daughter removed from his class, but the principal declined because no policies were broken and the teacher and her daughter didn’t appear to have an “adversarial” relationship.

The district says the teacher was not violating the dress code, which doesn’t prohibit men from wearing skirts.

“I didn't have any intentions of offending anyone or making any sort of political statement,” Chu said in an email to WRAL News. “It was just kind of a joke.”

But Lewis said her daughter feels “unsafe.” She says Chu talks about his personal life, “saying such things like, ’There’s a hot guy at the local coffee shop’ and seeing the image of him dressed as a female.”

Chu expressed confusion about the accusations.

“As far as my personal relationships go, I've been hearing something to the effect that I was discussing my homosexual relationships with students non-stop?” Chu wrote. “I think this is a result of the tutu thing mixed in with my mentioning of having a crush on a barista at one point to my coworkers in the hall, which the students overheard and began relentlessly asking me for updates. I had no updates, because it was just a crush, and I also do not identify as homosexual. Lesson learned: never going to mention a crush in school again.”

School board member Sam Hershey called the online comments “disgusting” and said the conflict shouldn’t be playing out online, where school employees have been bombarded with messages.

“There was a line crossed when it went to social media,” he said.

Several Wake County parents have defended Chu and spoke at Tuesday’s school board meeting against Moms for Liberty.

“I believe our schools face far more pressing challenges,” said Bobbi Vinson, a parent.

Mike Figueras, a bilingual community organizer for Education Justice Alliance, alluded to a disrupted school board meeting earlier this month.

“It’s unsettling and sad that groups are abusing this public comment opportunity at such a critical time.”

Steven Greene, a North Carolina State University political science professor, said the timing, so close to the election, creates a climate where these issues can be even more divisive.

“It speaks to the larger culture war battle that this election is very much about,” Greene said.

WRAL News called and texted Lewis, asking for an interview about her concerns. She declined.

“Thanks for reaching out,” she wrote. “After the woke Liberal article that came out already and I have interviewed with WRAL in the past and your reporters cut things and twist things around that deviate far from the Truth I am not interested. I will say if you do not see the grooming and sexualizing that WCPSS is allowing upon our children … you are part of the problem. I can not wait to get my children out of this indoctrination camp that is not educating our kids!”

Lewis didn’t respond to a question about why she was raising this concern a year after the incident, when her daughter wasn’t in his class, and about Chu’s claim that students had only overheard him talking about his crush. Lewis has said that she discovered the photo of Chu in a tutu in late September. She has stressed that she was also upset about the teacher discussing his “personal sex life,” noting the coffee shop anecdote.

Chu said he has not spoken with Lewis or any members of Moms for Liberty, whom he says had also not reached out to him with their concerns.

“I don't harbor any hard feelings towards my student, her parent, or the Moms of Liberty, and I hope everyone has a great week and can move on from this issue,” he wrote.