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Milwaukee Approves World’s 1st Gay-Safe Middle Schoolby Kilian MelloyFriday Dec 19, 2008 The first safe haven for GLBT middle schoolers is set to open in Milwaukee.
A Dec. 17 article posted at the Web site of U.S. News and World Report said that the new school was approved by the Milwaukee Board of Education, and follows the establishment, four years ago, of the Alliance School, a Milwaukee high school that, like New York City’s Harvey Milk School, is intended as a safe educational environment for GLBT students.
Like the Harvey Milk and Alliance high schools, the new middle school will also be open to straight students.
The article said that approval for the new, GLBT-safe middle school was unanimous, albeit via procedure rather than by vote: the issue was not advanced to a vote or tabled for further study, and so passed.
The school is expected to open next year; applicants are able to sign up right away.
The move follows the failure, last fall, of a similar proposal for GLBT high school students in Chicago. That plan, the article said, did not even make it to the school board, due to community opposition to a gay-safe school.
The Chicago chief of schools, Arne Duncan, favored such a school, a point that conservatives recalled upon Duncan recently being named as President-Elect Obama’s pick for Secretary of Education.
Harvey Milk High School also attracted controversy, the article said, with demonstrators protesting the school’s opening in 2003.
But the Alliance school in Milwaukee excited little controversy, and the new middle school is expected to follow suit.
Milwaukee Public Schools director of school innovation Marty Lexmond was cited in the article as saying that a GLBT-safe middle school is warranted because gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered youth are asserting their identities earlier now than in the past.
Such students are often targeted for harassment by their peers, and even by teachers and other school staff. According to GLBT student advocacy organization GLSEN (the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network), more than one-fifth of GLBT students experience physical attacks while at school; more than 86 percent endure name-calling and other verbal abuse.
According to the GLSEN Web site a significant fraction of GLBT students drop out because they are too afraid to continue attending school.
Straight students who are perceived to be gay or lesbian are also targeted for abuse.
In several states where anti-bullying legislation has been proposed, such laws have been attacked by religious and social conservatives as providing "special rights" to gay youth, or as promoting a so-called "gay lifestyle."
Lexmond cited the Alliance high school as an invaluable resource for GLBT students, suggesting that without a gay-safe environment in which to learn, many of those young people would have left school altogether.
Kilian Melloy reviews media, conducts interviews, and writes commentary for EDGEBoston, where he also serves as Assistant Arts Editor.
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