Students Spotlight Need For LGBTQ Progress

Kids will sometimes make mean comments when fifth-grader Wesley Bianchine uses the teacher’s restroom at school. But all the other bathrooms are designated for either boys or girls, leaving non-binary kids like Wesley without another place to go.

“The world is not organized for transgender children,” Wesley said to a panel of alders and an audience of over 50 people. 

And as a stream of students, parents, and educators insisted, New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) should help change that.

Wesley was one of about twenty people, roughly half of whom were kids, to testify before the Board of Alders Education Committee about what it’s like to be an LGBTQIA+ kid in the city’s public school district.

The committee convened in City Hall’s Aldermanic Chamber on Wednesday evening for a workshop on how NHPS can better support LGBTQIA+ students’ mental health and safety. 

The meeting occurred months after the district published a summary of a 2022 – 2023 ​“school climate survey,” indicating that ​“a significant gap remains between nonbinary, transgender, and genderqueer students’ perceptions of School Safety and Sense of Belonging compared to the district wide averages in these areas.” This reflects nationwide data indicating that LGBTQIA+ youth are significantly more likely to experience mental health challenges than their peers, especially transgender youth and youth of color.

NHPS did not provide district-wide survey results in time for this article’s publication, but the school district has published school-specific data.

At the city’s largest high school, Wilbur Cross, non-binary and gender-queer students were 17 to 18 percent less likely than average to feel safe at school. Transgender students were 12 percent less likely than average to feel like they are ​“valued members of the school community.”

To address the chasm in students’ sense of safety, administrators stated a goal of implementing a Gender-Sexuality Alliance (GSA) in all middle and high schools, of which about 10 currently have such a club.

The meeting took place two years after the district adopted its Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming Youth Policy, which gives students the right to use the bathroom that fits their gender identity and to be identified by their chosen name and pronouns, among other things. 

NHPS administrators conveyed to alders that the school system’s rollout of this policy is not yet complete.

For instance, the policy requires the school district to train ​“all District staff in transgender sensitivity” as well as providing ​“developmentally age-appropriate training” for ​“all students.” So far, 20 out of the district’s 42 schools have provided staff with this kind of training.

And the policy requires that all students have access to ​“the restroom that corresponds to their gender identity” — including, should they prefer for any reason, a ​“single user restroom.” On Wednesday, NHPS officials reported that two years after the policy was implemented, 82 percent of high schools have a gender-neutral bathroom.

Fair Haven Alder Jose Crespo pressed the administrators on this statistic. ​“What is your strategy to get to 100 percent, and in what period of time?” 

NHPS Chief of Staff Michael Finley responded that the school system has conducted ​“assessments” of how many schools are in need of gender-neutral bathrooms. As for when 100 percent of high schools will have such bathrooms, Finley said, ​“I can’t give you a date.”

“You mentioned middle and high schools,” said Fair Haven Alder Sarah Miller. She recalled that when one of her kids was in preschool, a teacher taught the kids about ​“all the different kinds of families” — how, for instance, some people might have two dads.

Research shows that kids frequently form a lasting sense of their gender identities in early childhood. And according to the American Psychological Association,​“the core attractions that form the basis for adult sexual orientation typically emerge between middle childhood and early adolescence”; in other words, it’s not uncommon for kids to develop an idea of their sexual orientation in elementary school.

“What kinds of initiatives are happening for kids as young as preschool and elementary school to talk about various kinds of families and people?” Miller asked.

“Our goal is to be inclusive,” said Student Services Director Typhanie Jackson. ​“I couldn’t tell you about any initiatives,” she said, but said she would follow up with that information at another time.

Jackson conveyed that one of NHPS’ priorities for supporting LGBTQIA+ students is to ​“promote the things we already have” and ensure students are aware of available resources, such as school social workers. The district is planning to unveil a website listing those resources.

After the administrators spoke, representatives from the city’s LGBTQ+ Youth Task Force presented a list of demands for improving school culture around gender and sexuality.

At the top of their list was for administrators to declare ​“public, visible support in affirmation of our students,” said NHPS educator Erin Michaud. 

A good step in that direction, said Elm City Montessori Magnet Resource Teacher David Weinreb, was when Superintendent Madeline Negrón appeared publicly at a Career High School Pride event over the summer. The advocates called for more of this explicit affirmation that ​“queer children matter.”

They also called for GSAs to be established in every middle and high school; for ​“full-time social workers, counselors, and psychologists in every school with reasonable caseloads”; for more representation of LGBTQIA+ history and culture in school curricula; and for all staff to receive training on how to support queer students. Weinreb noted that NHPS already has access to training on gender and sexuality through the platform Vector.

"So Hurt & So Invisible": Students Call For All-Gender Restrooms, GSAs

Throughout the evening, students, teachers, and parents alike from several schools testified of anti-trans hate and harassment in New Haven Public Schools. They told stories of students who were physically assaulted, who were dragged out of the bathroom by a security guard, who were called slurs, or asked about their anatomy, or deliberately misgendered — all of which, the testifiers said, took place recently within school walls.

Wesley recalled that after they came out as non-binary in the second grade, their teacher continued to host ​“boys versus girls spelling tests,” requiring Wesley to participate in a team based on the gender they were assigned at birth. 

Some teachers will use the phrase ​“boys and girls” to address students, Wesley said, ​“which makes me feel like I am not welcome or part of the class.”

Other elementary-aged kids joined Wesley in calling for the school system to acknowledge a spectrum of gender identities among kids of all ages.

Ollie Rivera, who attends Elm City Montessori and testified at the meeting alongside several other members of the school’s GSA, said they ​“still see bathrooms and sports teams for boys and girls,” without an all-gender option. ​“It makes me feel so hurt and so invisible.”

Another Elm City Montessori student, Jade Santiago-Rojas, said that throughout her time as an NHPS student, ​“If anyone found out you were not ​‘normal,’ which meant you were not straight, you would get bullied for it.”

“I don’t think any student should have to feel unwelcomed in a place they go five days a week, six hours a day. This is why I think all schools should have GSAs,” added Santiago-Rojas.

High School in the Community student Alexander Lopes added that in his experience as a trans kid in the foster care system, many queer kids can’t count on their families for the affirmation they need.

“A lot of people at home aren’t accepted,” he said — which makes it all the more important that ​“people should feel safe at schools.”