The Chicago Public Schools has decided to shelve plans for a Pride/Solidarity Campus for gay, bisexual, transgender and lesbian students, and we hope that the district will broaden its outlook instead of simply dealing with one demographic.
The Chicago Public Schools has decided to shelve plans for a Pride/Solidarity Campus for gay, bisexual, transgender and lesbian students, and we hope that the district will broaden its outlook instead of simply dealing with one demographic.
The idea of the Pride/Solidarity campus (also known as the Gay High School) was to provide a safe place where gay and lesbian students can attend school. The school was modeled after New York City’s successful Harvey Milk School (named after a gay San Francisco commissioner who was murdered in 1999).
We certainly applaud the district for seeking to address the concerns of students who feel that their needs are not being met in other public schools. According to Shannon Sullivan, executive director of the Illinois Safe Schools Alliance, “There is compelling local data through CPS YRBS that documents significant increased adverse outcomes for young people who identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual in such critical areas as skipping school, due to feeling unsafe, being threatened at school and attempting suicide.”
But we think the district should address the problems facing all of its children, who are skipping school due to feeling unsafe, being threatened at school and attempting suicide, and actually being shot and killed.
The reality is that too many of Chicago’s public schools are filled with children spending more time worrying about their safety and dealing with bullying instead of worrying about their grades. With 50 percent of Chicago Public Schools students dropping out, there are serious problems to be dealt with that don’t involve being gay or lesbian. They involve being unsafe, or unmotivated, or just plain unnoticed.
That doesn’t mean that there should not be some acknowledgement that gay or lesbian students can benefit from an environment that is more nurturing, more sensitive. That is the idea behind Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Those schools have historically been positive institutes of higher learning for African American students. But those schools were developed in an environment where Black students could not go to school anywhere else and embraced their role as a crucible for young Black minds. The Pride/Solidarity Campus was designed only to provide a haven and a place where gay students can have “pride” and “solidarity.”
We’d like to see the Chicago Public Schools develop a district-wide plan to make sure the students are safe. We’d like to see the district come up with a plan to give that kind of nurturing and motivation to students regardless of their sexual orientation. We’d like to see the district make sure those students are safe in their home schools, rather than pull them out and segregating them in one school. We’d like to have the district focus on tolerance and safety, and not separation.
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