NYC to Open Gay High School...

[Senusret I]

http://www.nynewsday.com/news/local/...-ny-columnists

by Sheryl McCarthy

July 31, 2003

Trying to reach anybody at the Harvey Milk School over the last few days was like trying to get through to the Oval Office.

The principal was busy interviewing staff for the coming school year, the receptionist told me, while the school's press spokeswoman was tied up in meetings with Department of Education officials. Moreover, they've been bombarded with inquiries since Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that this tiny, privately run school for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered youths is about to become a bona fide New York public school - the first public high school for homosexual students in the country.

The mayor's announcement provoked a howl from the usual opponents of change and accommodation to anyone not in the mainstream. Some editorial writers compared running a public school for homosexual students to running racially segregated schools in the old South.

Are gay students the only ones who face harassment, they asked, snidely inquiring whether there's any such subject as "gay math"? And what will come next, they demanded to know, a school for Haitian kids, for Russian immigrants? Goodness gracious! And so un-American.

One columnist inveighed that the government ought not be running a school whose values go against the Bible, the Quran, the Torah and the Buddhist scriptures.

Please. I'm sick of people who, in the guise of supporting equality and promoting the American values we supposedly all share, practice bigotry.

When I visited Harvey Milk 15 years ago, in its modest lodgings in Manhattan's meatpacking district, it was run by the Hetrick-Martin Institute, an organization devoted to supporting the needs of homosexual youths which has run the school up until now. Its 20 students were refugees from the anxiety, abuse and even violence they had suffered at regular public schools.

The school appeared to be working beautifully. I met Maria, an 18-year-old lesbian who left her Queens high school where students called her "dyke" and where her family felt she was an embarrassment to her niece, also a student there. Finnegan, 19, had dropped out of his Queens high school, where he constantly caught flak, had been harassed by his Jehovah's Witness family, left home, attempted suicide and wound up in a psychiatric hospital. Donna, a lesbian who'd been called "she-man" at her former school, could never come to class before without getting picked on.

At Harvey Milk, they found a comfortable place where they could study and develop themselves without the distractions of a hostile environment.

You might infer from some recent developments that society's growing acceptance of homosexuality precludes the need for a separate high school. But David Buckle, an attorney at the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, says the organization still gets calls from students who are cornered in gym locker rooms and dark hallways, and who have to leave home for school earlier than other students to avoid being attacked on the bus and so they can hide until the school bell rings.

Buckle described the expansion of Harvey Milk as a very positive thing. "It's too bad that it has to happen, but thank goodness that it has."

One of the great things about New York is its willingness to try to accommodate so many different kinds of people in a constructive way. One million public school children already choose from a dizzying array of schools geared to a wide spectrum of personal interests and proclivities. They include schools for students who use sign language, who sing and dance and play instruments, those who want to do automotive work, and girls who want to develop leadership skills without the distraction of boys. Surely, there's room for a school for fewer than 200 gay and lesbian students.

One of the final acts of the former Board of Education before it was demolished and replaced by the Department of Education was to vote to make Harvey Milk a full-fledged public high school and to set aside the money to expand its physical space. I think the old board went out in style.
Copyright © 2003, Newsday, Inc.

[Wonderful1908]

I am all for it! As mentioned earlier we have schools that sometimes need to meet the needs of children in "special" situations. I am not about shielding kids from reality in order to give them a false sense of the real world, but if and I have had a young man or woman come to school in the process of experimenting with living as the opposite sex there is no way they would be left alone. As a teacher I realize if a student is not comfortable at school they will not and cannot learn effectively. Does that mean everywhere you go in society you need to have a special niche carved for you? No way. However when developing the foundation to be a succesful adult your teenage years are pivotal, and creating an enviroment where it is understood this is the exception to the rule HOWEVER "we recognize that you may need a special setting to be giving a fair chance" is fine. I don't beilieve in using race as a comparison to being homesexual but if that is the case. What about after school programs and for that matter in school programs designed to help minorirtes succed in the real world? In Texas we are flooded with the need for ESL teachers (English as a second language) and programs. I was in a program the focused on sending African-Americans to college in high school, as taxpayers if we condone one special group of people based on injustice that STILL occurs then it is fair to extend that courtesy to other groups who STILL face obstacles when trying to obtain an education. We as a nation cannot afford to allow any group of students gay, straight black or white to miss out on education. Maybe growing up in the bay area has me more liberal, but since I really went to school with people like these teenagers and I am a teacher I know that education has to be a priority if we want to be succesful as a nation.

[enlightenment06]

I agree with Michael Long

[FeeFee]

*bump*

Sweet 'n' sour
on Harvey Milk



By JOE WILLIAMS
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Protesters waving signs of hate were far outnumbered by cheering throngs greeting students yesterday as classes began at the newly expanded Harvey Milk High School for gay and lesbian teens.
Police escorted students into the East Village school as 250 supporters lined Astor Place - largely shielding the teens from a dozen protesters brandishing banners reading "God Hates F---" and "Repent."

"For those of you who say this school is unnecessary, I would refer you to some of the signs and comments from over there," said City Council Speaker Gifford Miller (D-Manhattan), pointing to the demonstrators.

The school was founded in 1985 as a small nonprofit program run by the Hetrick-Martin Institute.

Over the summer, education officials announced that Harvey Milk would become a full-fledged city high school, eventually housing 170 students.

The plan sparked a national controversy and a lawsuit contending that the school would illegally segregate gay and lesbian teens.

Protester Rueben Israel branded the supporters of the school as hypocrites.

"These people say, 'Accept us for who we are but don't accept anybody else,'" he said.

But Dino Portalatin, 19, of Brooklyn, a recent graduate of Harvey Milk, said he was picked on so much in a traditional high school that he began playing hooky.

"I felt I would be better off dead than to deal with what came with going to school," Portalatin said.

Chancellor Joel Klein said he was disappointed that the school's $3.2 million expansion generated so much negative publicity.

"I'm saddened, because it is a school that works," he said.