LGBT Youths Sound A Cry For School Accountability

About 59 LGBT students and their allies crowded the sidewalk outside Chicago Public School headquarters, 125 S. Clark, April 13 to demand that CPS CEO Ron Huberman put in place an accountability system for teachers and staff who harass and berate their students.

The rally, organized by Gender JUST (Justice United for Social Transformation), followed a series of meetings the organization has been holding with Huberman and other CPS officials since mid-2009. The organization wants CPS to institute a grievance procedure for students who are being unfairly treated by CPS employees.

Gender JUST member Lucky Mosqueda explained that participants were asking CPS to hold their teachers and staff to the same standards that they are held to. "This is a grievance procedure, like they do for students," Mosqueda said. "Why can't we fill out the same kind of report that they fill out for us?"

Gender JUST met with Huberman three times and other CPS officials six times, but so far CPS has been dragging its feet, according to Gender JUST co-founder Sam Finkelstein. "They keep saying that they're committed, but there are steps that CPS has to take and they just won't take them," Finkelstein said.

He said the meetings, the last of which was March 10, were cordial, but Gender JUST members have grown frustrated with the lack of progress.

"After the last meeting our patience was tested," Finkelstein said, adding that the proposed procedure was a relatively non-punitive solution and conceived in the spirit of a social justice framework.

Nevertheless much ire was literally aimed at Huberman, as protestors several times directed their cries to his fifth floor office at CPS headquarters.

"My demand for Ron Huberman up on the fifth floor is this," Mosqueda said. "We want a grievance procedure and we want it now."

Gender JUST member Eric Amaya spoke of the difficulties many GLBT youths face in school, adding, "School life hasn't been a walk in the park for any of us."

Looking up to Huberman's office, Amaya loudly asked, "Do you mean to tell me we can't have this right?"

"Brian," who recently graduated, spoke of an altercation that was instigated by a CPS teacher, and admitted that it led to him telling her to "shut the fuck up." He knew what he had said was wrong, he added, but "there were no repercussions on her part whatsoever."

According to Finkelstein, "Everybody here has stories like these. We're not just talking about dealing with teachers, but the staff and security guards, too."

For more information, visit genderjust.org.