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Loading ...Chicago Gay School Plan Advances
10.09.2008 11:12am EDT
(Chicago, Illinois) A proposed high school for LGBT students has gained the support of Chicago Public Schools CEO Arne Duncan. Duncan said Wednesday he will recommend that the school board approve plans for the school.
”If you look at national studies, you see gay and lesbian students with high dropout rates … studies show they are disproportionately homeless,” the Chicago Tribune reported Duncan as saying. ”I think there is a niche there we need to fill.”Called the Social Justice High School—Pride Campus, it would offer a core curriculum preparing students for college.
If the proposal gains final approval, the school would have about 600 students. A location for the school has not been found, but
Duncan said that will not be an issue. The earliest it could be up and running would be 2012.
Opponents of the school call it a misuse of public funds, and some LGBT rights advocates say that the school would segregate gay students by giving them a false sense of security.
On Wednesday a national survey was released showing that nine in ten LGBT teens have been verbally harassed in the past school year, and almost half have been physically harassed because of their sexual orientation.
The Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network’s National School Climate Survey involved 6,209 LGBT students between the ages of 13 and 21 from all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
Students in schools with a Gay-Straight Alliance reported hearing fewer homophobic remarks, experienced less harassment and assault because of their sexual orientation and gender expression, the study found. In addition, these students were more likely to report incidents of harassment and assault to school staff, were less likely to feel unsafe because of their sexual orientation or gender expression, were less likely to miss school because of safety concerns and reported a greater sense of belonging to their school community.
Nevertheless, the study found only about a third of students had a Gay-Straight Alliance at school. The same number of students could identify six or more supportive educators, and only a fifth attended a school that had a comprehensive safe school policy.
The first all-gay high school in the US opened in New York City in 2003, named for slain San Francisco supervisor Harvey Milk.
It is my prediction that the teen pregnancy rate and the abortion rate at the proposed Chicago gay high school will be substantially below the national average while giving even the most chaste schools in America a run for the money in the “no slip ups”….excuse the pun….category.