Gay advocates upset at shelving of Chicago school

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As far as Miguel Garcia is concerned, Chicago already has a gay high school. Jones College Prep, where the 16-year-old is a junior, has the city's largest Gay Straight Alliance, an organization of more than 100 students that he and other members say wields considerable influence at their downtown campus.

When he heard about the now-scuttled proposal to open a gay-friendly high school, Garcia said to his classmates, "Don't we already have that?"

But not every Chicago Public Schools student has access to an environment like Jones', and gay rights advocates say the city lags behind its peers nationwide in making sure campuses are safe for gay students.

Unlike its two larger counterparts — New York City and Los Angeles — the nation's third-largest district has yet to implement comprehensive programs and policies to support the needs of gay youth.

While Chicago Public Schools has included sexual orientation in its nondiscrimination policy since 1997, schools have been slow to update their handbooks to include those protections, and students still find themselves fighting to establish Gay Straight Alliances, said Shannon Sullivan, executive director of the Illinois Safe Schools Alliance.

"There has been ... a lack of translation between central office to local schools," Sullivan said.

That contrasts with New York City, home to the country's first gay high school and a pioneering training program developed in partnership with the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, or GLSEN.

Before a proposal to create Chicago's Social Justice High School: Pride Campus was refocused and eventually withdrawn this week, planners intended for it to become one of the country's only schools dedicated to gay students. The school's design team modeled it as a haven for gay youth who disproportionately face bullying and harassment, resulting in absentee rates more than seven times the national average, according to a 2007 GLSEN survey.

But days before the Chicago Board of Education was to vote on the proposal, the plan was retooled and renamed to focus on serving any bullied or harassed student. Officials have hinted that those changes — including the removal of key references to the gay community — went too far.

The design team members agreed to withdraw their proposal "in order to protect its integrity," said Bill Greaves, a team member and the city's liaison to the gay community. He said the team plans to reapproach the board next year.

"We don't know what the proposal will look like at this point, but we will make sure that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered students are not invisible," Greaves said.

The Pride Campus plan, with its college preparatory focus, hoped to duplicate the success of New York City's Harvey Milk school, which primarily serves gay youth.

Harvey Milk sends 60 percent of students to advanced programs or college and has a 95 percent graduation rate, both higher than the district's overall rates. It is run by the city's Department of Education.

New York also recently expanded its Respect for All initiative, a citywide training program for educators on how best to address bullying and harassment, with a focus on gay students.

"Harvey Milk High School is an incredible program that has reached students who would not otherwise graduate," said Eliza Bayard, executive director of GLSEN. "At the same time, the city has also recognized that there is a need to address these issues across the board."

The San Francisco Unified School District has adopted policies against name-calling, established gay-friendly student organizations at all middle and high schools and hired staff trained to provide health-related information to gay students and those questioning their sexual orientation.

Similarly, the Los Angeles Unified School District has Project 10, which GLSEN has identified as the country's first in-school program for gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender students. And dozens of students who identify themselves as GLBT enroll in Central High School/Tri-C, a dropout prevention program.

Bayard noted that other states and school districts, from Massachusetts to Minnesota, have programs to support gay students and said she hopes Chicago follows suit.

"I can guarantee you that it's started a dialogue," said Rufus Williams, president of the Chicago Board of Education. "What we should do is try to create tolerance in every single environment that we have so we have a culture of tolerance."

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On the Net:

Chicago Public Schools: http://www.cps.k12.il.us

Illinois Safe Schools Alliance: http://www.illinoissafeschools.org

Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network: http://www.glsen.org

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