Message from:
The Coalition for Safer Schools of NYS, PO Box 2345, Malta, NY 12020
Email to:SARATOGANY@aol.com

The Real or Perceived Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgendered Student Protection Project
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DETROIT NEWS, September 18, 2000
615 W. Lafayette, Detroit, MI, 48226
(Fax 313-222-6417 ) (E-MAIL: Letters@detnews.com )
( http://detnews.com/ )

By Deb Price / The Detroit News

School boards:Ensure safety of all kids

Public education turned an exciting page with the start of the new school year:More and more school boards are learning that protecting students from anti-gay violence and harassment is part of their jobs.

There's a new national trend toward school boards amending their anti-discrimination policies to include sexual orientation. That's an important first step toward teaching principals, counselors, teachers and students that attacks on school children perceived to be gay will no longer be tolerated.

"Every child deserves a safe environment in which to get an education. In the end, most school boards see that safety is something that has be to be enforced, regardless of whatever objections there might be," says attorney David Buckel of the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund.

After decades of ignoring the terrifyingly anti-gay climate that turns every school day into a living hell for a great many children, school boards aren't magically waking up to their responsibilities. Rather, during the past four years, the boards have repeatedly received remedial education in the high costs of negligence:

In 1996, Jamie Nabozny won a nearly $1 million settlement from Ashland, Wis., school officials after a federal jury found administrators liable for ignoring increasingly violent attacks on him by anti-gay bullies. In 1997, the U.S. Department of Education warned that schools risk losing their federal funding if sexual harassment of gay students is allowed to flourish. In 1999, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education that schools can be held financially liable if principals react with "deliberate indifference" to student-on-student sexual harassment.

And the list of states forbidding anti-gay discrimination in public schools has grown to at least nine:California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin.

Meanwhile, armed with horrifying statistics, parents, teachers, lawyers and students are forcing school boards to address the long-neglected problem of anti-gay harassment. A 1999 national survey by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network found that 69 percent of gay, bisexual and transgender students said they were harassed, and 14 percent said the harassment was violent. Forty-two percent felt unsafe at school because of their orientation. (For tips on how to report anti-gay harassment, go to http://www.lambdalegal.org.)

Buckel says the testimony of harassed students often prods school boards to act: "There is nothing like hearing from a 15-year-old that he or she doesn't feel safe at school and may have to drop out. That really goes to the core of what educators should care about."

Also, school boards are seeing that if complaints about anti-gay abuse reach the lawsuit stage, they're likely to lose - in a court of law and the court of public opinion. Just last month, officials in tiny Pleasant Hill, Mo., agreed to pay $72,000 to a former student who alleged he had been subjected to anti-gay violence, including nearly being run over by a car. The Justice Department pressured the school district into agreeing to train educators to create a climate of tolerance, where everyone is free from harassment.

School boards are already beginning to hear from their own attorneys that the best way to avoid lawsuits stemming from anti-gay harassment is to have a strong and effective anti-bias policy - one that treats the attackers, not the victims, as the problem.

Also, school boards know that efforts to ban gay/straight alliances - popping up at hundreds of high schools nationwide - backfired in Orange County, Calif., and Salt Lake City, Utah.

"The school club battles have sent an important message to school districts that they can't turn back the clock and try to pretend that gay students dona't exist," says Lambda attorney Jon Davidson.

School boards must ensure that every public school is a place where students feel safe and learn to treat each other with respect.

Deb Price's column is published on Monday. Write letters to The News at 615 W. Lafayette, Detroit, MI 48226, or fax to (313) 222-6417 or send e-mail to letters@detnews.com
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This message has been distributed as a free informational service for the expressed interest of non-profit research and educational purposes only.

PRIMER WEBSITES
GLSEN --- Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network
www.glsen.org
Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund
www.lambdalegal.org

Safe Schools Coalition of Washington
www.safeschools-wa.org
The P.E.R.S.O.N. Project Home Page
www.youth.org/loco/PERSONProject/
Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays
www.pflag.org
Empire State (NY) Pride Agenda
www.prideagenda.org
GLAAD
Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation
www.glaad.org

"The Real or Perceived GLBT Student Protection Project"
("Being safe at school should not be a radical concept".. Jamie Nabozny)

A project of:
Coalition for Safer Schools of New York State

John Myers
Director of Operations and Programs
PO Box 2345
Malta, NY 12020
(518) 587-0176
Email:saratogany@aol.com

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