Obama Education Secretary For Gay High School

Amanda Carpenter | December 16, 2008 11:30 AM

Head of Chicago Schools Arne Duncan recommended the creation of gay high school in October 2008.

President-elect Barack Obama's nominee to become Secretary of Eduction has supported specially designated high schools for gay, lesbian and transgendered teens.

"If you look at national studies, you see gay and lesbian students with high dropout rates...Studies show they are disproportionately homeless," Duncan said at a October 2008 event where he recommended the gay school be built. "I think there is a niche there we need to fill."

As Chicago's Head of Public Schools Arne Duncan recommended the School for Social Justice Pride Campus, Chicago's first school for gay youth. Moreover, educators at this school believe it could be a model for a national program for educating gay teens.

Advocates for the school ultimately expect 600 children will attend Pride Campus, which was scheduled to open in 2010 until members of the design team called off a critical vote on it in November, over conflicts between Chicago clergy members and school planners.

Information from the school's website says:

The Social Justice High School–Pride Campus would improve on current conditions for LGBTQA youth in Chicago’s public schools and would be a national model for best practices in the education of LGBTQA youth.

We will teach the history of all people who have been oppressed and the civil rights movements that have led to social justice and queer studies...

Our school is dedicated to the principles of the hunger strike that brought the school into existence, namely social justice oriented principles and values such as truth and transparency, collective community power, struggle and sacrifice, and ownership and agency.