LGBTQ+ Students Push For Change

After coming out as a transgender boy, Daniel Martinez asked his Wilbur Cross teachers to start calling him by a new name.

One refused.

“This is not your name,” the teacher told Martinez, as he handed back an assignment. ​“Put your legal name or I will not grade it.”

Martinez said it made him feel hopeless that an adult was so set on refusing to recognize him as a boy, even though all his other teachers had accepted his new gender identity, calling him Daniel or Danny.

“Although I knew I would face many obstacles during my transition, I never knew how serious it all was until I was head-on with this situation,” Martinez said. At times, he even blamed himself. After another teacher said, ​“That’s just the way [that teacher] is,” Martinez felt like he’d ​“done something wrong,” like he’d been ​“an inconvenience.”

Martinez went to his guidance counselor three times before he asked the school administration for help. Each time, the teacher acted apologetic, Martinez said, but then kept harassing him.

“When they would talk to him, he would act like he learned from his mistakes and he would never do it again,” Martinez recalled. ​“When I would go back to class, he would tell me he didn’t care what they told him, that what was on my birth certificate was what I needed to put down on paper.”

Principal Edith Johnson (who said, in an interview, that she couldn’t discuss what happened) eventually transferred Martinez into another class.

Martinez now tries to avoid bumping into the teacher in the hallways, ​“in case he has any other negative comments to make,” he said.

“Overall,” Martinez said, ​“I believe it all comes down to training teachers about LGBTQ+ students and how to help them.”

That’s exactly what the New Haven LGBTQ+ Youth Task Force — a coalition of students, educators, city staffers, pediatricians and youth advocates — has set out to do over the past year.

Recognizing that schools might not know how to accept the LGBTQ+ identities that teens increasingly feel comfortable identifying with at a younger age, the task force is pushing for New Haven to implement non-discrimination policies that make will make schools feel safe, inclusive and affirming for students who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.

The group was formed in January 2018 when David Weinreb, a bilingual teacher at Fair Haven School, started wondering whether the district was doing any outreach for LGBTQ+ students. He reached out to Jason Bartlett, the city’s Youth Services director, and together, they formed the task force.

Thanks to their advocacy, the Board of Education updated its nondiscrimination policy last summer to include LGBTQ+ students. Social workers, physical education teachers and wellness facilitators all attended training sessions, and busloads of students will head to the True Colors Annual Conference next month.

Higher-ups in the school district’s central office like Deputy Superintendent Ivelise Velazquez said that, going forward, even more school employees are going to be better trained ​“to really hear what a child is saying” about who they are and who they love.

Though she didn’t know the details and didn’t want to comment on what happened to Martinez, Velazquez said no student in New Haven should face discrimination because of their sexual orientation or their gender identity.

“That’s the kind of thing we don’t want to have happening. That’s the kind of thing that training will better prepare our leaders to understand and have some empathy around. That’s the reason why we are moving forward with capacity-building around equity,” Velazquez said. ​“We know that there is this need, across the board and on every level. That’s not an indictment of this system; that is public education at large.”

Across the country, LGBTQ+ students report experiencing discrimination, harassment and bullying at school.

A national survey from 2017 found that one in three LGBTQ+ students reported skipping at least one day of school within the past month because they felt unsafe or uncomfortable in class.

About 40 percent of LGBTQ+ students said they avoided gender-segregated spaces like bathrooms and locker rooms, and over 70 percent of LGBTQ+ students said they avoided school events and extracurricular activities.

Just over half of LGBTQ+ students who were bullied said they didn’t report the incident, because they figured school staff wouldn’t do anything or would make it even worse.

But experts say that there are solutions out there to make LGBTQ+ students feel welcome.

Schools with resources for gay and transgender students, like supportive teachers and inclusive lessons, all saw decreased absenteeism, according to a study from 2013. Gay-straight alliances and anti-bullying policies were especially helpful for transgender students, the study found.

After getting the anti-discrimination policy updated last summer, members of the New Haven LGBTQ+ Youth Task Force are now focusing on those other aspects. They’re trying to take the work off the pages of the district’s policies and make sure that it’s felt within the schools.

In their second year, the task force members are hoping to spread the word about how to report bullying and harassment, measure how accepting schools are in the annual climate survey, set up gay-straight alliances in every school, and make sure staff district-wide are well-versed in the issues facing LGBTQ+ students.

Deputy Superintendent Velazquez (who helped write a comprehensive policy for transgender and gender-nonconforming youth at her previous job in New London) said that she’s ​“on board with efforts to ensure all students are included and safe.” She said that administrators are updating the climate survey questions, and she said that building leaders will be publicizing the process for making anonymous complaints.

With the school board’s approval, Velazquez added, New Haven will be reinstating a District Equity Leadership Team that will guide school faculty through an assessment of how students are treated on all measures of identity. While race is often centered on in those discussions, Velazquez said that she’ll make sure sexual orientation and gender identity are included in the discussion too.

“Equity work is about all dimensions of identity,” she said. ​“It needs to be done intersectionally, and we are going to be incredibly intentional about that in talking about all groups.”

Meanwhile, the task force is also asking students to get involved in creating their own support networks. They’re focusing in particular on Hillhouse, the one high school that they said doesn’t have a gay-straight alliance in place.

Hillhouse Principal Glen Worthy said that no one has approached him about forming a group yet. But Worthy said that he hasn’t seen any evidence of bullying of LGBTQ+ students at his school.

“Our kids don’t hide who they are,” he said.

Still, other high schoolers said that the gay-straight alliances can make a big difference.

Natalie Semmel, a junior at New Haven Academy, said her school’s GSA’s visible presence within the school has made it clear that homophobia and transphobia shouldn’t slide.

“When you hear a teacher who says things like that out loud, you start to worry that everyone else is thinking that too and just being less open about it,” Semmel said.

Recently, their GSA (which they’ve rebranded as a ​“gender and sexuality alliance”) has been advocating for more professional development for teachers, particularly about how to respond when students come out.

“I think our school is on the better end of things because we have such an active GSA,” Semmel said. ​“Lots of other schools have the same problems that we have, but they don’t have such a clear presence of a queer group in their school.”

Danny Diaz, the district’s parent engagement coordinator and an out gay man, said that, throughout New Haven, students are generally accepting of their LGBTQ+ classmates.

“Kids nowadays are amazing. They teach everybody a lesson to accept who they are,” he said. ​“It’s not a perfect world, but we’re doing a good job. I’ll always make sure that anyone in the district knows they can call me so I can have a conversation with them and support them any way we can.”

The LGBTQ+ Task Force meets on the second Thursday of every month from 5:30 to 7 p.m. in the Pride Center at 84 Orange St. Email [email protected] to get on the mailing list.