12 Years trying to get the Oklahoma City Public Schools to add sexual orientation to its student policies on bullying, harassment and nondiscrimination, as well as teacher professional redevelopment sessions to enlighten them on the existence of GLBT Students in their classrooms and sensitivity training as was done with other groups of students had so far led to my wrongful dismissal in May and a District Court case in August that proved the dismissal was wrongful.
I had been assigned to a school that was not the one from which I had been wrongfully dismissed with some excuse about my return there being bad for morale, obviously the morale of the administrators who got caught using their positions to promote bigotry and not the teachers’, and the district had appealed the august ruling more to save face as no one had ever challenged a dismissal before in such a public way, an appeal they would ultimately lose.
Although I could have demanded my old position back as the contract and court ruling would have supported that, even though having won my case, I had no reason to have to make any agreements with the district, I informed them I would accept the assignment without any further legal action on my part provided they added the GLBT inclusive language to student policies.
The sentiment expressed unofficially by one school board member was that while it was clear the language should be added, doing so close to my court win would have handed me a second victory, and that, while good for me, wasn’t good for the district’s image.
Again, students and their welfare were secondary.
Bob, one of the people who over the years attended many School Board meetings when attempts had been made to get district policy language more clearly inclusive by mentioning Gay students as opposed implying them, had moved to Berkley, California with his wife in order to be the journalist he had always aspired to be and where he got to live in the type of society he had fought for in Oklahoma. His primary chosen mission was to keep people informed of various and ignored nuclear threats, such as shipping radioactive waste quietly through communities who thought they were harmless trucks hauling the mundane.
Being a member of the fourth estate had its privileges, one of which was to receive copies of School Board agendas days before the rest of us got a chance to see them. By rule the Board agenda was released to the public within 48 hours of a meeting, but Bob got his copies five days before that, and he would forward them on to me.
So it was that three and one-half months after the ruling in the Trial de Novo; two and one-half months after the ruling was appealed and I was placed in limbo for a while; one and one-half months after I was assigned to Grant High School; and five business days before the actual meeting I had a copy of the upcoming Board agenda that listed the possibility of adding “Sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to the district’s policies on Non-discrimination, Bullying, and Harassment as an agenda item.
Although it took 12 years, at least half a dozen superintendents, changes in School Board members, a bevy of reprimands, a court case prompted by actions that resulted from some opposition, multiple appearances before the Board by many people, at least one connected death, possibly two, some rather strange behavior on the part of administrators, including “Family” members, and some of the most far fetch arguments in opposition, finally, what the Board had been told had sunk in. Even though they now saw they were ahead of the curve, it was a position the Oklahoma City Public Schools District could have been in for many years now.
Sitting in the auditorium during that part of the meeting where the agenda item came up and the discussion took place was an odd experience as I listened to the district‘s in-house legal counsel answer questions of Board members by repeating much of what had been said over the years by quite a few people and with much frequency, as if it were newly discovered information. The phrase “I found this recently” and “I discovered this report on the internet this past weekend” were used often, even though everyone concerned had had hard copies of those very reports for quite some time, years even.
The member of the Board who was so eager to get on camera when the vote to terminate me had been taken the previous May so he could try to hammer a few extra nails in my professional coffin and who testified against me at the Trial de Novo, first informed the other members and the superintendent who the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network (GLSEN) was, and then read from some of the reports that had been ignored by the Board throughout the years. There were times I could remember who had made the original presentations and when.
The main concern was that with the recent passage of the Matthew Shepherd Hate Crimes legislation the Board had an obligation to cover itself legally by making it clear Gay students were clearly covered in the applicable policies. Also of concern was the sudden rapidity with which the topic of bullying was being covered.
Normally such a revision of policy language had to be presented to the Board at an open meeting for discussion and consideration, and then voted on at the next meeting to allow time for rxpressing concerns. In this case, the item was brought up and discussed with immediate action expressly expected.
To those on the Board that had questions about this, the member who brought forward the item stated that the rules were waived because it was a sensitive issue with “nothing to profit us by extending the debate on the policy beyond tonight”.
Although it would later be denied that the policy language voted on and accepted by a large majority of the Board was in any way connected either to the years of advocacy or to my treatment and the results of the court case, the language itself clearly showed the connection.
The previous advocacy for the words “sexual orientation” had taken many years. The words “gender identity” came up for the first time in relation to the Trial de Novo and proposed settlements exchanged between attorneys before and after it. Had the Board been acting on its own it is quite possible that only the familiar phrase, “sexual orientation”, would have come up.
As it was, their actions in adding both phrases put the Board‘s policies not only further than would have been expected, but far ahead of some major, more forward thinking cities.
Looking forward, GLBT students no longer had to be victims with no recourse. They could now report harassment and bullying, and district personnel had to respond properly. Personal prejudices were finally to be left at the school house door. Looking back, there were some students whose lives would have been better and their school experience more welcoming if the Board had seen the importance of being ahead of the curve in the years before this meeting .
There were two letters from a superintendent in 2003 and 2004 stating clearly that these students were covered by these policies, although not openly mentioned; the words “sexual orientation” had appeared on the Board web site in 2006, only to be removed within hours with no explanation and with many unanswered question over the following three years as to who directed that action and how legal it had been.
Sadly, over the years, the Boards had continually kow-towed to “local norms” that had been established and protected by the Southern Baptist Church and local conservative politicians known for a propensity to only respect those with whom they identified, and thrown these students to the wolves for political reasons and personal considerations, ignoring that the district’s commitment was to all students, even ones they did not necessarily like.
But here the school district had added to and improved the “local norms”.
Now the protections were there along with the process to address infractions. The GLBT students had received long overdue protection. Their school experiences had a better chance now to be positive.
For the last 10 years, the Student and Parent Handbook has stated.
“District policy prohibits and does not tolerate bullying, harassment, or discrimination based on race, color, national origin, sex, disability, age, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, genetic information, alienage, and veteran, parental, family and marital status or for any other reason. Bullying fosters a climate of fear and disrespect that can seriously impair the physical and psychological health of its victim s and create conditions that negatively affect learning, thereby undermining the ability of students to achieve their full potential.”
There were a few people who were there for most, if not all, of the time it took to get some movement. They went to meetings, tried to organize things, wrote letters and called offices, donated time, money and books, and made up the Same Ten People (STP) you could always count on.
People like:
Rob Abiera, Jim Nimmo, Bob Nichols, Mike (Skye) Camfield, Eddie Kromer, Paul Bashline, Rhonda Rudd and Jayshree, Karen Parsens, Jean Pennycuff, all the guys at Tramps, still here and gone, Nathaniel Batchelder and his Peace House, Rey Jones, a man who wanted justice for everyone, Jim Prock, Victor Gorin, Reverends Scott Jones and Jenalu Johnston, and Paula Schonauer.
Then there were people like the guy who handed me twenty bucks in a bar after a Pride Parade, and asked me to buy a book or two for my students (I did). There were a lot of those. They were the people who popped out of nowhere to make a phone call, or write a letter to the editor; or the man who feared for his job if his orientation were a public thing, but who bought me a drink and listened when I needed to vent as his contribution to the cause. Some people just don’t know being a friend is supportive, no matter how quiet that is.
So Thanks to the men and women who were part of a pyramid of activism.
HAPPY 10th ANNIVERSARY!!!!