This June 28 is the fiftieth anniversary of Stonewall. The Stonewall Riots mark the birthday of the modern gay rights movement, and contrary to popular belief, same-sex marriage did not end the movement. Successful achievement of gay rights remains in the distance and out of focus. The minimum is a world of free of discrimination, and America, much less the world, hasn’t even passed a federal prohibition on LGBTQ discrimination. The world may have come a long way since 1959, but LGBTQ people, and especially children, still face an uphill challenge.
School is still a painful place for most LGBTQ kids. Research and advocacy groups like my favorite, GLSEN, the LGBTQ educator’s network, continue to produce studies showing that 90% of students at school face harassment because of their sexual orientation and gender identity. Over 60% feel unsafe.
The Foundations of Q School
The idea for a school serving the LGBTQ community and its friends and allies isn’t new.
The call came first from the data. Folks, school kids still say nasty things about gay kids. Spend a day as a fly on the wall in a 7th grade class. If that’s not enough, the annual Student Culture Survey, GLSEN’s own surveys and bountiful academic studies highlight the significantly different life path LGBTQ discrimination forces upon innocent kids. Illinois in particular isn’t as progressive as the progressive and well-funded schools like Evanston and Oak Park claim, much less the schools without significant LGBTQ parent populations. The need in Illinois for a school free of harassment is a reality for large numbers of kids every day. It’s hard to learn when you’re afraid of getting punched.
The second call for a Q school came in comparing Chicago to its peer cities. Chicago is the only major US city with no school for the LGBTQ community and its friends. New York has the Harvey Milk School. Los Angeles has a gay charter school housed in its community center. Even Milwaukee, Denver, Dallas and Atlanta have dabbled with LGBTQ schools. Chicago is a notable outlier.
The third call came from the desire to combine the positive values of the LGBTQ community with best educator practices. I tend to lose people here. LGBTQ Values are what unifies our community.
Growing up gay and finding the LGBTQ community taught valuing patience, kindness, compassion, freedom, originality, perseverance, diplomacy and excellence. These are the foundations of an LGBTQ school. The idea is to build the perfect school, where every student goes on to happy careers and lives. It’s building a school rooted in LGBTQ Values to act as a beacon for show all schools the way to success.
The Path to Q School
I lived in Uptown when I started work on the school. Uptown is a gem. It’s a racially, ethnically, sexuality, gender-identity and socio-economically diverse neighborhood on the north side of Chicago. It’s located between Andersonville and East Lakeview, two of Chicago’s most famous gay neighborhoods. Most gay people I know who live in East Lakeview don’t have families, though the proportion of LGBTQ families in the city generally is increasing rapidly. The preponderance of families I know in East Lakeview are Jewish friends, and most of them are straight couples who embrace the intellectually and culturally robust civic culture found in the heart of urban gay capitals like Chicago. East Lakeview is great, but the even greater cluster of LGBTQ family friendliness is on the north side of Uptown, in Andersonville.
Andersonville is a small neighborhood surrounded by highly gay Edgewater. Andersonville had more LGBTQ families, so it or nearby Edgewater seemed like a better place to start Q School.
Finding a Home for Q School
As ground zero for midwestern LGBTQ families and our friends, Andersonville works as a community that will support the Q School project. I started by proposing a charter school. My motivation for going the charter route was not political. In Chicago, that’s an oxymoron. Chicagoans cannot say “charter school” and not think “political” simultaneously. Chicago and the State of Illinois are so polarized politically that ”charter school” is one of those litmus test words that signals friend or foe. After very few conversations, I saw that the class politics surrounding the charter idea would eclipse the LGBTQ school idea. One story: one of the local politicians running one of the gay neighborhoods for a long time said it to me point blank. He could never support a charter school in his neighborhood. He loved the idea a Q School, but if it was going to work, it needed to be a private school. I heard a similar tale from most politicians.
Funding Q School
Public or private, Q School needs to accept poor kids, especially poor LGBTQ kids. Being the idealistic dreamer I am, I was hoping the school could be public but accept children from a hundred miles away. I want a multi-jurisdictional school, a school that crosses school districts and city boundaries. If you know anything about Illinois politics, you recognize the audacity in this bold idea.
I want to create a school that could accept kids from Chicago as well as the suburbs around Chicago. In Illinois, this idea disrupts the near-religious obsession with local government control. This is especially true within school districts. I promise you that if you try to take per student dollars for a public school in Chicago from Evanston, Oak Park, Lincolnshire or any suburb, you will start a riot. Illinois came up with a plan to allow students to attend schools wherever they wanted, the Illinois Charter Commission, and I wanted to use it. I’m nonpartisan, but once I proposed that, I stopped being the cute gay activist and became the big bad corporate pig. The way the Commission worked was simple. If a local school board didn’t approve a charter, the State Commission could approve it for that district or whatever combination of districts around it. I could care less about how I ensured every student could attend Q School. I just wanted the doors to be as open as possible.
Public Funding for Q School.
Public money should pay for LGBTQ kids because most of them can’t afford private schooling. My mission in life is educating youth. I’ve learned how to fundraise, but we know what it costs to educate a kid, about $25,000 a year. Educating youth is the future, and that’s a public responsibility. My real passion is running inspiring and successful schools. Since education is a social good, the public should pay for it, regardless of how the school is structured or what community is serves.
I also like the idea of a publicly-funded school over multiple districts because, for far too long, the oppressive distinction between districts and funding levels has held Illinois back from progressing in any meaningful way with education improvements. This is a complicated problem, but if the harms outlined in Jonathan Kozol’s 1991 book Savage Inequalities have only worsened.
If we locate Q School in Andersonville, I wanted to welcome kids from anywhere in Illinois. All the arguments excluding suburban kids had nothing to do with teaching and learning, so the Commission gave one a way to integrate.
Supporters of Q School
GLSEN, the biggest national LGBTQ education advocacy group, transformed in Chicago into the Illinois Safe Schools Alliance. Talking with them was the next stop on my journey. They loved the idea of a school rooted in the values of the LGBTQ community. I didn't mention that I was considering configuring the school as a charter. After hearing from politician after politician that charter is a dirty word in Chicago, I decided to set aside the idea of funding as much as I could and focus on the idea.
My biggest support came from a mother who volunteered for a neighborhood Chamber of Commerce. The mother had a 4-year-old who was gender non-conforming, so she loved the idea that I was planning a school where she could be sure her daughter would be welcome.
Designing Q School
Design challenges took most of my time. Like the funding challenge, the design challenge wound up a political challenge. Milwaukee’s Alliance School taught me a valuable lesson. I spoke with the LGBT school in Milwaukee called The Alliance School. The head of the alliance school was a teacher who’d been elected to the position for less than a year when I spoke with him. He explained to me that, for better and occasionally for worse, The Alliance School had become am “island of misfit toys" in the Milwaukee school system.
I wanted to confront this challenge head on. LGBTQ parents who would send their kids to Q School understand this. I wanted straight parents who would send their kids to Q School to understand this as well. Yes, the LGBTQ community is an oppressed minority. No, a school serving that community would not focus on that oppression.
Q School will prepare students for college, career and life better than any other school. Achievement at the school will be so extraordinary that Mitch McConnell will want to send his great-grandkids there.
Building a Q School community
Q School is still in the planning. If you’re intrigued, reach out. First, share your thoughts or questions. Reach out to us. Tweet at us. Email us. Second, we’re looking for partners, educators, parents, students, board members, thinkers, activists, designers and programmers. Contact us or add your name to our mailing list on our website to receive updates.
John Heintz is an educator building Q School from the ground up.