VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (WAVY) — Virginia Beach City Public Schools will now recognize October 2024 as LGBTQIA+ History Month after a resolution was adopted by the School Board Tuesday in a 5-4 vote, with two members abstaining. The concern from parents who spoke at Tuesday's meeting arose after the board voted at the start of the meeting to move adopting that resolution from the consent agenda portion of the meeting to the action portion, which meant that, instead of the resolution being voted on with several others at one time, it needed a separate vote to be adopted. There was discussion amongst the board about the reasoning for that — one board member said that the LGBTQIA+ issue is controversial, thus it needed a separate vote. However, the five other resolutions — Bullying Prevention Month, Disability History and Awareness Month, Dyslexia Awareness Month, Filipino American History Month and Indigenous People's Day — all remained in the consent agenda and didn't get moved to the action Items. "They're not controversial, so this obviously was controversial, and as you can see by the vote, some people didn't agree with us ," said at-large board member Beverly Anderson. Resident Melissa Lukeson said she was pleased the board adopted the resolution. "I'm grateful that they adopted the resolution, [though] I find what they did to be completely unnecessary," Lukeson said. "The school board members that wanted to pull it off and separate it out from the other resolutions [were] clearly discriminatory towards the LGBTQ community." Said parent Cody Conner: "It made me feel like they were discriminating against the LGBTQ community, my children my friends, my family. My kid deserves to see that they belong, my kid gets to deserve to see that they can contribute and they can excel," said Cody Conner, a parent. To learn more, click here.