Boardbuzz

Help for schools with controversies over student sexual orientation

A consortium of 13 national organizations led by NSBA has issued a new resource document for school leaders on legal issues surrounding students’ sexual orientation and gender identity. Here is NSBA’s press release with the details and a list of the other participating organizations.

The document is in Q&A format and provides legal guidance on a range of issues, from harassment to equal access to religious expression to free speech to Boy Scouts and military recruiters. Its October release coincides with Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender History Month, an event organized by groups like the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN). The kinds of difficult controversies that confront school officials frequently arise in connection with such events. Passions always run high, political groups and lawyers on both sides swarm frantically, the news media realize they have a new-found interest in public education, and school leaders are left wondering how to get back to academics.

Lest anyone should question what in the world possessed NSBA’s legal team and all of these brave organizations to step into such a political firestorm, just check out a sampling of recent events:

Legal controversies over gay-straight alliances (GSAs) in Louisiana and Kentucky, and two in Texas, one where the district ended up recognizing the GSA and one where it didn’t. A lawsuit threatened over a “Day of Silence” observation by students. A ruling that a school discriminated against a student who wanted to express religious objections to homosexuality at a school function. Lawsuits over T-shirts, both pro-gay and anti-gay. A lawsuit when school officials fail to prevent harassment, and another lawsuit when they so despair of preventing harassment that they establish an entirely separate school for gay students. And controversy over a gay student’s posters in a student government election and controversy over the alleged disciplining of a child for talking about his lesbian mothers with a classmate.

The easy URL for the document is http://www.nsba.org/cosa/sexualorientation.

admin|October 13th, 2004|Categories: Boardbuzz, Governance|

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