PROUD Academy Comes Out For New School

The nation’s first Black openly gay state official met the organizers of what hopes to become the first LGBTQ-centered private school in Connecticut — and one of only a handful in the country. 

Their message about being ​“firsts” in an era of anti-gay backlash was identical and impassioned: Don’t just be your authentic self. Celebrate that self, too.

That moment of celebration and mutual support unfolded Thursday night before 60 LGBTQ kids, their families, and allies at Southern Connecticut State University’s Adanti Student Center at 354 Fitch St.

The occasion — which featured New Haven native and newly elected state Treasurer Erick Russell as one of several guest inspirational speakers –was a recruitment event for the PROUD Academy. That’s the state’s first LGBTQ private school, still in formation, which is hoping to plant its flag in the Elm City as early as the fall of 2023.

The school’s founder, Patricia Nicolari, a 30-year veteran teacher and administrator from Ansonia, said the school is assembling a leadership team and board to address developing a curriculum, finance, administration, achieving accreditation, and obtaining and moving into a building that, ideally, will offer classes for students in grades seven through 10.

But all that is still a work in progress, she emphasized. There are only a handful of such fledgling institutions in a national network, which includes the Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy in San Francisco.

What is certain, Nicolari said, is both the urgent need for such a place, especially for transgender kids who generally don’t feel safe and are frequently bullied even in public and private schools that are earnestly trying to be supportive.

The other certainty, she said, is location: to establish in New Haven due to this city’s many nonprofits, such as the Yale School of Medicine’s Child Study Center and other resources addressing bullying, trauma, and other challenges that gay and trans kids increasingly confront. 

What triggered Nicolari’s work in organizing the school was not only her personal experience of having to fend off bullying by peers when she served as a teacher and administrator herself. 

Since retirement, she has been working in the state’s foster care system, she said, and kids there have an especially critical need to feel safe in the refuge of a school (when their home life is fraught). She said that many gay kids are experiencing the opposite. 

That, plus a review of national research on the level of safety, or its absence, felt by LGBTQ kids nationally was the impetus to move into the organizing stage for this new school, she added.

“By law in Connecticut,” said Barbara Duncan, the school’s board president, ​“all kids are entitled to a school of choice that suits them, and the Proud Academy would be not only LGBTQ-friendly but a place that respects and celebrates diversity.

“A private, grades seven through twelve first [of its kind school] in Connecticut focused on LGBTQ kids,” she elaborated, ​“but [a school that also invites and embraces] all races, religions, status, trans, Black, brown … a place where we don’t have to explain pronouns or how we dress, so we can just focus on our studies.”

“There are those fighting to set us backward,” Russell said when he addressed the audience, with a focus on the kids who might be prospective students. ​“As students your job is to be ready. Being your own authentic self is your own activism, sometimes an act of resistance. It’s organizations like the PROUD Academy that will have your back. You’ll be trailblazers as part of this school. You’ll be models for those who come after.”

Without any advertising yet, Nicolari said applications from teachers, administrators, and other potential staff are pouring in. In addition about 25 families have gone on to the school’s site and submitted ​“intent-to-enroll” forms.

That data, she said, along with, of course, the size of the building obtained and finances, will help determine with which grades the school might open. But even with, for example, only two grades, as a first step, Nicolari is determined.

“When I began my career in education,” said the evening’s host, SCSU President Joe Bertolino. ​“I was told to stay closeted to succeed. Then someone came to me,” he added, and he became part of a group, then, of only 10 out gay university presidents. ​“They showed me this was something I and others can do.”

By the time Bertolino arrived to take the helm at Southern in 2012, he added, ​“there were 25 out LGBTQ college and university presidents. Today there are over 300. Our support [for the PROUD Academy] will be unwavering.”

Tuition for the proposed school, Nicolari estimated, might be in the $30,000 to $40,000 range and there is an ambitious goal already in place to raise funds to offer scholarships to families in need of assistance.