OK, kiddo! Here are all the fantastically amazing posts tagged with School boards

School Cancels Prom Rather Than Allow Gay Dates

March 19th, 2010

A school in rural Mississippi has cancelled the school prom rather than letting a lesbian student bring her same-sex partner.

Constance McMillen said she approached her school’s administration about taking her date to the prom and wearing a dashing tuxedo, but was told that the two must attend separately, be accompanied by “guys,” wear dresses, and refrain from dancing together. When McMillen refused these conditions, the school cancelled the prom altogether—for everyone.

Say, this is just like the time back in grade 1 when I took my ultra-gay He-Man dolls action figures home rather than let my friend Matthew play with them. Except now it’s over a prom with an entire school board’s administration staff, some formal written policies, harsh sanctions, and a pending lawsuit from the ACLU. Other than that, it’s pretty close though.

As for what Constance McMillen thinks of the whole thing, here’s what she told the media: “I want my prom experience to be the same as all of the other students—a night to remember with the person I’m dating.”

Good on ya, Constance!

Catholic School Boots Preschooler For Having Gay Parents

March 8th, 2010

Sacred Heart of Jesus, a Catholic school in Boulder, Colorado, has kicked out a student after a year of preschool for having lesbian parents.

While an anonymous staffer revealed that the school itself is furious with the decision, the archdiocese is quite content with themselves. In an official statement, they said that booting the child from classes was simply a board-wide policy: “No person shall be admitted as a student in any Catholic school unless that person and his/her parent(s) subscribe to the school’s philosophy.”

Punishing children with expulsion because of the sexual orientation of the parents may be malicious, uncaring, and very un-Jesus-like, but, hey, that’s Catholic schools for you. As a private institutions they’re likely well within their right to behave as unethically as they like.

Not a very good place to send a child, come to think of it.

I managed to survive my entire gradeschool education in the Catholic system, but it wasn’t pretty.  Who knew that escaping that awful institution could have been so easy? If only I pretended my parents were gay!

School Board Protects Gay Students, Meets Opposition

November 30th, 2009

Life before the policy update was rough

Good news coming out of Chilliwack, British Columbia. The Chilliwack Board of Education has voted to update their bullying and harassment policies to directly address the homophobic bullying that has been making life very difficult for gay students there.

Great news, marred only by two trustees that actually opposed the anti-bullying measure: Heather Maahs and Martha Weins.  Maahs explained her opposition to the press:

If you open the policy up for one group, you’d have to open it up for all groups of students. Nobody deserves to be harassed or bullied, but it’s difficult when you take one group of students and write a policy specifically for that group.

I won’t even justify that with an invective. If gay students are being tormented in ways that other students aren’t, it is the school board’s duty to address it with as many specific policies as required.

The school board already had a general bullying and harassment policy, but there was no official denunciation of homophobia, nor any specific training for educators and staff in the old policy. Without these in place, few bullied GLBT students feel comfortable to approach anyone for help. I say this from personal, painful experience—and with that in mind, the new anti-bullying policies get my enthusiastic, prolonged approval.

Teacher Fired Over Gender Identity

October 5th, 2009

So very tragic.

The St. Albert Catholic School Board has fired a transgendered substitute teacher for being, well, transgenered.

The teacher’s union representing Mr. Jan Buterman has filed a human rights complaint over the firing, with incontrovertible evidence of workplace discrimination. “Since you made a personal choice to change your gender,” a letter received from the school board to Mr. Buterman reads, “we have to remove you from the substitute teacher list.” The letter adds that “the teaching of the Catholic Church is that persons cannot change their gender.”

Gee, they sure go through a lot of trouble to make sure students never have contact with any GLBT role models. I mean, can you imagine what would happen to the students if that were to happen? Surely one shudders at the very thought!

Say… You know, the name of the school board sounds awfully familiar to me… Oh, that’s right! It’s the one in which I spent my entire grade school education. Funny, I still turned out gay.

Now, normally religious institutions are exempt from following human rights laws, but the St. Albert Catholic School Board is publicly funded which throws a bit of a kink into that argument. I don’t know how this human rights complaint will turn out, mind you. Alberta technically does not recognize transgendered individuals in its human rights legislation (and consequently tramples over them whenever possible), but I would hope that either the board follows the same, respectful antidiscrimination laws that other publicly funded institutions are required to follow, or find private sources of funding.

(Hat tip to Mercedes Allen for the story. Read more over at Dented Blue Mercedes.)

School Board Partially Caves, Offers Social Justice Course Upon Parental Permission

February 13th, 2009

And go bug your sister, while you're at it.

The Abbotsford school board has reversed its decision to yank a social justice course from its schools. The course, a grade 12 elective featuring a unit on gay rights, was nixed after anti-gay groups and vocal parents lobbied to have it pulled.

The sudden reversal is great news for all the students that had the course ripped out from under them last Autum. Their substantial outcry no doubt helped to get the course re-instated, but something is still a wee bit off.

Curiously, the course now requires written parental consent before any student is allowed to register. That means that students who wish to take the course will be barred if one of their parents objects.

Julie MacRae, superintendent of the Abbotsford school board, said that the parental permission decision was made due to “the sensitive nature of some of the course content.” An interesting stance; almost nearly partly understandable. Parents should always be in the know when it comes to what their children are learning; however, at grade 12, there’s no reason the student shouldn’t have the final say in their own education.

Still, how’s this for a solution: Any parent who objects to the social justice course must take it themselves first before they mandate their decision onto their children. Fair, no?

Parents Can’t Censor Curriculum: School Board

June 25th, 2008

Lesson Interuption

The Vancouver Board of Education has outlined rules in which parents may pull their students out of class due to familial religious beliefs. In a formal policy, the board said that while parents may request that students be pulled out of lessons dealing with gay issues in Health class, this does not apply to other classes—and any missed material still must be learned through either home instruction or self-directed studying.

Some parents have expressed concern that these regulations are too strict and infringe upon parental rights to pass personal values onto their children. I don’t believe that’s the case here; parents are absolutely free to teach what they believe to their children. The issue, instead, is whether parents have the right to censor the curriculum taught at school and prevent students from hearing parts of controversial topics that parents disagree with.

Having gone through a Catholic school system where gay issues were never addressed, I know what it’s like to be in the dark on gay health issues and have personally felt the effects of a blind-eye to homophobic bullying. Independent of what parents choose to teach their children at home, it’s extremely important that these are dealt issues with in schools. Gay students exist and often do not feel they can ask questions that concern them directly for fear of outing themselves.

The Vancouver Board of Education is right. These programs do not infringe upon or contradict parental rights, and should not be censored. Violence and harassment are never acceptable, regardless of one’s beliefs on homosexuality, and preventing the distribution of health information to those that require it would be irresponsible.

School Board Bans Anti-Homophobia Poster

June 23rd, 2008

Poster Censor

The Mission Public School District in B.C. has banned an anti-homophobia poster from all of its staff rooms for the second time in two years. The poster, which was to be displayed in locations only visible to staff members, featured a gloved hand holding a medical syringe accompanied by the tag line “homosexuality is not an illness.”

Randy Huth, the Director of Instruction for the school district, said the poster was “graphic,” adding that it visually depicted substance abuse and homosexuality. Huth said that even though students were unable to view it, it was “inappropriate—even for staff too.”

Lauren Gosselin, a spokesperson for the Fondation Émergence who designed the poster, was surprised by Randy’s interpretation:

[Substance abuse] is not what we were aiming for when we were designing the poster. The message that we want to send out is basically a very simple one: homosexuality is not a disease, period.

I’m inclined to believe the poster designers. Substance abuse isn’t mentioned anywhere in the poster text and I’m not really sure that injection drug users use sterile gloves more than, say, nurses.

Incidentally, this is not the first time the Mission Public School District has banned an anti-homophobia poster. Last year, it pulled posters featuring a newborn wearing a hospital bracelet with the word “homosexual,” accompanied by the text “Sexual orientation is not a choice.”

Catholic School Boards Refuse Gay Bullying Study

January 28th, 2008

Iran—no, wait… Catholic Schools…

A nation-wide study on homophobia and bullying in high schools was launched on Friday as a collaborative effort between the University of Winnipeg and Egale Canada. The ambitious study hopes to gauge the social climate in Canadian high schools by surveying 10,000 students before the end of June.

Not all students will have the opportunity to participate, however. Three Catholic school boards in Ontario and Alberta have refused to co-operate with researchers and barred the survey. Helen Kennedy, Egale’s executive director, expressed surprise at the Catholic boards’ decisions:

The study is not about sexual behaviour; it is about social behaviour. It’s about bullying, harassment and taunting in our schools.

A worthwhile effort, and it’s unfortunate that not everyone is sensitive to the cause. Even more strange, though, is the rationale for the research ban. Reverend Dennis Noon of the Wellington Catholic District School Board, who refused his students’ participation in the study, told the media that homophobia was simply “not a big issue” in Catholic schools.

Gee, where have I heard that before?

Having gone through the Catholic school system, I don’t buy it. I’m not alone, either; Ontario’s Minister of Education, Kathleen Wynee, expressed disappointment at the school boards’ dismissal of the research, saying she hopes for more open conversations with the boards.

As for Reverend Noon and the other board representatives, if they don’t think that homophobia is a problem, then why not allow the researchers to conduct their survey? Given the harm caused by bullying, I think the Catholic school boards ought to face the issue for a change and acknowledge when gay students are being harmed in their schools.

Union To Teachers: You Gay?

January 24th, 2007

Supreme Survey For Sexual Orientation

Less than one year after the Nova Scotia Teacher’s Union scolded the Halifax Regional School Board for asking teachers if they’re gay, the union is doing the exact same thing.

Now, before you all exclaim something like “Gee whiz, talk about the pot calling the kettle tacky and unfit to grace any self-respecting gay man’s kitchen!” this survey is different. As union president, Mary-Lou Donnelly, put it:

[The survey is] more to gather information on perceptions, on resources that are available in the schools, on what we can identify in our schools that help our educators or our students or that are lacking in our schools. It’s not about identification of individuals at all.

Well, I gotta admit, this is a far better approach than the Halifax School Board’s mandatory and personally-identifiable survey. That survey was an ill-advised attempt at appearing concerned for gay staff after being fined for an appalling, gay-related human rights violation. But, still, after that fiasco, what kind of responses are they expecting, precisely? “Yeah, I can be fired based on my sexual orientation and wrongfully investigated for child molestation, but hey—the coffee here is not too shabby!”

Toronto to Students: You Gay?

November 17th, 2006

School Census

The Toronto District School Board sent out a new student census last week, and it includes that age-old question of academic relevance: You gay or what?

The survey results will be compared with the student’s grades and achievements at the end of the year. The whole thing is supposed to help the board better understand diversity and student needs.

As for my thoughts… Back in high school, I was so deep in the closet that I’m still finding socks stuck to me with static now and then. Let’s just say my grades and achievements wouldn’t have been counted in the right pile. Well, OK; perhaps if the school board found it as obvious as everyone else…

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