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History of the Issue and the Mobilization of
the Right:
About a year and a half ago, the
district administrators were organizing an in-service day
for teachers around diversity issues. A district
diversity committee planned a series of presentations and
workshops on a wide variety of diversity topics,
including two workshops to help teachers understand some
of the difficulties facing gay and lesbian youth. A few
members of the diversity committee leaked information to
their religious congregations, and it caused a local
uproar in the religious right quarters.
Close to the time of the leaks, the
Superintendent was asked to attend a meeting of a local
chapter of a nationally recognized Christian Right
organization, "Citizens for Excellence in Education
(CEE)", to address its concerns about the district's
sex education program. This organization's stated mission
is "to implement our Lord's plan to bring
public education back under the control of the Christian
community" by "taking complete control of local
school boards." When the superintendent arrived, he
was blindsided by the group's fury over the scheduled
gay/lesbian teacher training workshops. He was requested
to remove the speakers, and ultimately agreed to the
group's request. Incidentally, the two speakers are
university faculty members, and are published national
experts on the problems faced by gay youth. They are
both, themselves, gay, and have been frequently targeted
in letters to the local media, as "homosexual
life-style advocates", and pushers of "the gay
agenda."
Letters to the editor abounded in the local
paper, mostly from the religious right, misrepresenting
the focus of the workshops as "homosexual
advocacy" and erroneously stating that they didn't
want their tax dollars spent forcing teachers to listen
to gay propaganda (teachers selected their own schedule
for the day based on their interests and professional
concerns.) A few letters to the editor were from teachers
denouncing the cancellation of workshops germane to their
professional development.
Shortly thereafter, a concern about the
speaker cancellation was raised at a school board
meeting, and the board overturned the superintendent's
decision. The speakers were re-invited.
The In-service proceeded without incident.
Many teachers who attended the gay/lesbian workshops
expressed very positive comments about the need for the
information received, and how much they had personally
benefited the session.
A few weeks after the in-service, the
school district was presented with a petition with 700
signatures from people protesting the workshops that had
already happened. The text of the petition included
language that stated that the petition signers believed
that they had a right to public schooling that was in
harmony with their moral beliefs.
Investigations of that petition uncovered
that signatures were gathered from a clip-out coupon from
a local religious right publication called "The
Communicant", and that approximately 300 of those
signatures were from people living outside of the school
district.
A few weeks later (in late spring of 1998),
a school board member proposed that "sexual
orientation" be included as a protected category in
the school district's non-discrimination policy, which
would be included in personnel policies. Board members
were not prepared for the proposal, and recommended
fact-finding, a possible local issues forum, and a public
hearing.
Grassroots Organizing and Strategies:
As soon as the issue was raised at
the school board, a small group of concerned parents,
teachers, and community members who knew each other
decided to work together to make this policy change a
reality. They got together and brainstormed a list of
local activists to tap for membership and for strategy
assistance. The group enlarged to a leadership Core of 8
and many peripheral members who agreed to do various
legwork tasks.
The group first decided to launch a
petition drive (see Appendix
#1, the petition), but only had five days to make a
self imposed deadline of the next school board meeting.
With a very intensive deadline commitment, the group
targeted some obvious places for support; i.e., the
Quakers, the Unitarians, the local synagogue, other
friendly congregations, the local ACLU chapter, some
liberal and non-sectarian university organizations, etc.
Without even taking to the streets, the group had
collected 1000 signatures in five days. It was presented
to the school board at its targeted time.
A data-base was made from the petition
signers, and the leadership Core of the
Non-Discrimination Group (NDG) decided to continue to tap
this group for active support by e-mail or U.S. mail.
Furthermore, the Core brainstormed a list of prominent
citizens (university educators, psychologists,
journalists, business people, etc.) who were known for
their beliefs in social justice to be courted by the
group personally for public support of this policy.
The group, at its own expense, sent a
mailing to the 1000 petition signers (See Appendix
#2) suggesting ways in which they could actively help
on the issue. The group opened a post office box in which
to receive responses. The group consciously decided to
not publicize that there was an active group working on
the issue, because in this town, it would expose the
group to organized attack in the local media by religious
right groups. Furthermore, tactically, it might have
value as a surprise that the opposition to homophobia was
getting organized.
The mailing received about 100 responses ,
and the Core sent another mailing to this sub-group. To
those who indicated that they would write letters to
school board members, we enclosed some strategical tips
to include in their letters, and included board member
mailing labels. Some of the more experienced grassroots
people thought that the way to get the biggest response
was to make life very easy for supporters. For those who
offered to write letters to the local paper, we
orchestrated the timing of their letter send-offs, so
that the paper would receive them in a wave, rather than
all in a lump. We asked all writers to send us copies (to
the PO box) so that we could track whether or not the
local paper was being even-handed in what they chose to
publish.
The school board then initiated the
creation of a Local Issues Forum (modeled after the
National Issues Forum), which is a full day discussion by
interested citizens on a controversial topic. These
Forums are designed to promote civil discourse on
difficult issues, and to help divided communities to find
common ground. A large group meeting defines an issue,
the large group is broken into several small groups, a
trained facilitator is provided for each small group, and
the group examines four positions on the issue, ranging
from far left to far right.
The School Board called for a Task Force to
work on the Forum, inviting a wide variety of voices from
the community. The Core of the Non-Discrimination Group
solicited supporters of the policy , including gay
people, supportive clergy, and supportive citizens, to
join the Task Force and were consequently
well-represented. That Task Force had to decide whether
or not to adapt a "canned" Forum Booklet or to
build its own from the ground up. It chose the latter. As
a result, the Forum was delayed until February 1999. The
booklet with the four positions was released to the local
news media a week before the event (see Appendix #3 - the booklet.)
The Forum took place on February 27th, 1999
and was attended by approximately 150 people. The large
group was broken into 15 smaller groups for deliberation
on the four positions and an attempt to find common
ground. At the end of the day, each group reported out to
the whole. The results were that all groups agreed that
school should be a nurturing and safe place for all young
people; however, only two groups reached consensus that
the policy should be adopted. In informal chats with
liberal participants, they uniformly stated most people
in their groups had genuinely come for discourse and
enlightenment, and that one or two members in their
discussion groups actively blocked consensus. The groups
that agreed to the policy felt that the opposition and
undecided group members had been persuaded by testimony
from teachers or students in their group. I heard that
only one group had difficulty remaining civil.
Three weeks later, the school board
scheduled a public hearing. The Non-Discrimination Group
sent another mailing to the 1000 petition signers
encouraging their involvement (see appendix
#4 - the 2nd letter.) The group also personally
called prominent community members soliciting support.
The board had people who wished to speak
submit a request in writing for a 3 minute time slot. The
board then held a lottery to narrow the list to 30
speakers, and offered the general audience some two
minute speaking slots, also by lottery.
The hearing was held March 15th, 1999. The
views of those in favor of the policy ranged from
teachers' and students' testimony of young people being
harmed by harassment and discrimination, psychologists'
testimony that homosexuality is neither a sickness nor a
choice, proponents of social justice in general, and from
parents who want their children to grow up in schools
that practice respectful behavior and tolerance.The
opposition's viewpoint ranged from fear of homosexual
advocacy, fear of this policy opening the door to gay
curriculum, revulsion of "abomination," a
representation of homosexuality as a "disorder"
which deserves no special treatment, a representation of
homosexuals as pedophiles, a fear of furthering the
"gay agenda", and a fear of homosexual
recruitment.
Of the thirty pre-scheduled speakers, 18
were for adoption of the policy, 9 were against, 2
offered a compromise option, and one was absent. The
speakers from the floor were 9 in favor, 7 opposed.
The Board announced that it had not set a
date to vote on this issue, as it was still collecting
and analyzing the data from the February Forum. It is
likely that it will stall the vote until after the May
primary elections. This issue has further mobilized the
right to put up five candidates for the school board in
the May primary elections. Some financial backing for
these candidates is coming from national religious right
organizations, such as Citizens for Excellence in
Education.
From rumored conversations with various
board members in the aftermath of these public
discussions, all members appear convinced that the
problem is real and needs to be addressed, but that they
are not necessarily ready to do so through this
particular policy addition. We are all waiting for the
outcome as of this writing, March 29,1999.
What We've Learned From the Process:
Some form of organization is imperative to
direct the voice of social justice, as the religious
right capitalizes on its regular weekly meetings at
church. The people on our Core group are highly active
people with very demanding jobs and a wide variety of
social justice issues to contend with. At first, we met
weekly, then biweekly, but soon it became impossible to
meet regularly because of career, political, and personal
demands. In the future, I would try to seek out and
solicit retired people to consider leadership on issues
like this.
Furthermore, the opposition may be small,
or even medium sized, but because of their organization,
they appear larger, and they are extremely vocal. I would
have, in retrospect, continued the petition drive to
enlarge our data base. From our experience, we got active
responses from about 10% of our data base. We need more
numbers being visible and vocal.
The most persuasive testimony on this
particular issue came from students and teachers, who
made clear that the issue was real, frequent, and severe
(see appendix
#5 - teacher testimony delivered at the hearing.)
The Local Issues Forum is an excellent
vehicle to begin dialogue on hot-button issues, and I
hope anyone considering working on this issue would use
the Forum Booklet as a basis for opening the dialogue.
This booklet was a six month collaborative project - but
this wheel's been invented for use by anyone working on
this issue.
All of the appendices of this case history
are provided to serve as samples or models of work done
by the Non-Discrimination Group and the Forum Task Force
and are available to be used by any community.
Appendix
#1- the petition:
Petition to the Board of Directors
of the State College Area School District in support of
full non-discrimination policy
We, the undersigned citizens of the
commonwealth of Pennsylvania, believe that is the
responsibility of the system of public education to
uphold the highest ideals and values of a democratic
society. This includes the rights of all citizens to
equal protection under the law, and of all children to be
educated in an environment which protects these rights.
We urge the SCASD to adopt and enforce policies and
procedures consistent with the PA Dept. of Education Code
of Professional Practice and Conduct for Educators, which
states that: "Professional educators shall exhibit
consistent and equitable treatment of students, fellow
educators, and parents. They shall respect the civil
rights of all and not discriminate on the basis of race,
national or ethnic origin, culture, religion, sex or
sexual orientation, marital status, age, political
beliefs, socioeconomic status, disabling conditions, or
vocational interests."
Name Address E-mail
Appendix
#2 - first communication to petition signers:
Dear Citizen for Equal Rights,
In April, you signed a petition asking the
school board to add "sexual orientation" to be
a protected group in its non-discrimination policy. We, a
group of concerned educators, citizens and parents, feel
that it essential that the School Board do so, as we know
that young people are being harassed and tormented. In
the absence of a full non-discrimination policy, these
behaviors go unaddressed. Furthermore, some excellent
teachers fear for their jobs.
The issue will be put to a public forum in
September; the board will vote on it in October. We know
that the opposition has a strong organization with
funding, and we know that unless we pull our resources
together, we will be defeated.
If you believe strongly in this issue,
there are a number of ways that you could help. Please
consider the options below, tear off the bottom portion,
and send it back to us.
****************************************
Name_______________________
Address_____________________
E-mail _____________________
Phone ______________________
1. I would be willing to write a letter to the school
board.
2. I would be willing to write a letter to the CDT.
3. I am willing to attend the public forum as a presence
on the side of an inclusive non-discrimination policy.
4. I am willing to speak at the forum in favor of an
inclusive non-discrimination policy.
Send reply to:
Non-discrimination Group (NDG)
P.O.Box 545
Boalsburg, PA 16827
or e-mail reply to:
ndp4scasd@juno.com
continue appendices
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