By Nathan Riley
The New York City Department of Education (DOE) supports LGBT diversity, but with an uncertain trumpet that only erratically integrates queer concerns into the curriculum.
That was the message of a September 17 panel hosted by the Stonewall Democratic Club of New York City that included educators, the City Council’s Education Committee chair, and advocates.
The new de Blasio administration is all ears when it comes to inclusion. The Council Education chair, Daniel Dromm of Jackson Heights, is out and proud and devoted his committee’s second hearing this year to LGBT issues. And displays of goodwill on the panel, held at the LGBT Community Center on West 13th Street, were abundant, even if everyone agreed the results of the efforts at inclusiveness remain tentative.
The evening opened with brief remarks from Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña, who presented a humanistic philosophy toward public education at sharp odds with prevailing notions that schools today are workplaces where students apply themselves to learn skills needed to pass tests. The chancellor emphasized the need for schools to be safe as well as effective in socializing children, whose personal development is as important as the knowledge acquired. Explaining that the school system had earlier eliminated guidance counselors, she talked about the recent hiring of 200 to help young people with both their personal challenges and their career plans. (At a City Council hearing this week, the DOE acknowledged it is uncertain how uniformly the counselors are spread across the system.) And, demonstrating she is someone who cherishes the students she oversees, Fariña talked about the importance after-school programs play in helping middle school youth forge bonds with their peers.
The optimistic, youth-affirming tone carried over into the panel discussion, which included Dromm, Elayna Konstan, who heads up the DOE’s Office of Safety & Youth Development, Lois Herrera, the senior director of guidance and school counseling in the department, Michael Silverman, the executive director of the Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund (TLDEF), and Jared Fox, the New York City chapter chair of the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network (GLSEN).
Konstan opened the discussion by detailing the DOE efforts since 2008 — in which she has been a key player — in implementing its Respect for All program, which aims to curb bullying, harassment, and other bias-based infractions. Under a “Chancellor’s Regulation,” teachers and school staff receive training aimed at combatting bullying and incorporating diversity into the curriculum. It was not long into the panel, however, before unfortunate memories of the school system’s failed Children of the Rainbow curriculum of two decades ago surfaced.
That effort, launched in the early ‘90s primarily as a means of promoting racial harmony, soon became a political debacle. The curriculum spawned a media frenzy when several conservative community school boards — decentralized elected bodies since abandoned in the school system — raised a hue and cry over three pages out of a total of 443 that focused on families headed by gay and lesbian parents. Though the curriculum did not address same-sex behavior itself, one school board head in Queens labeled it “dangerously misleading lesbian/ homosexual propaganda.”
The chancellor at the time, Joseph A. Fernandez, tried to quell the furor, saying he was “saddened by the irony that teaching children the fourth ‘R’ — respect for their neighbors and themselves — has brought on the hateful condemnations.” However, the Board of Ed — which has also since been replaced by the mayoral-controlled DOE — sided with the conservatives and Fernandez soon left New York.
Those memories linger — and some LGBT advocates worry the negative lessons from 22 years ago continue to color the thinking today. One sore point is that teacher follow-up in the classroom is voluntary. Dromm was not shy about voicing his ire. Diversity instruction, he said, “often ignores LGBT people.” While acknowledging the voluntary nature of much of the Respect for All initiative, Konstan noted that teachers run a risk if they don’t teach material on which students will be tested.
One of the audience members on hand, Steve Ashkinazy, a founder of the Harvey Milk High School that serves at-risk LGBT students, left the panel fired up and dashed off a letter to his fellow Stonewall members arguing that “so long as teachers and principals are allowed to opt out, it’s a guarantee” that respect for the LGBT community “will never take hold in the areas where it is needed most.”
Dromm called for an end to a critical factor in the silence surrounding school bullying incidents. Though bias incidents concerning religion, ethnicity, gender, and disability are categorized as such, there is no tally of homophobic harassment and bullying. The Education Committee chair said the schools needed to keep track of its LGBT students and bias incidents targeting them in order to protect them.
GLSEN’s Fox disagreed, saying it was “unfair” to ask youth to “check a box” regarding still evolving identities. He argued his group is able to gauge trends in anti-LGBT incidents and attitudes through survey samples.
Dromm fired back, “Our invisibility is our greatest enemy.”
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