Georgia’s First LGBT School
Radio Commentary, 90.7, 91.7 New Life FM, July 1, 2016 – By Sue Ella Deadwyler
A new private school is scheduled to open in Georgia in September. Its name is Pride School Atlanta and its aim is to attract lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students and teachers. Pride School Atlanta will be the first private school for LGBT in the South, but not first in the country. The first opened in Oak Lawn, Dallas, Texas in 1997, but closed in 2004.
New York City’s Harvey Milk school opened in 2003 as a public LGBT school funded by 3.2 million tax dollars, That school originated from a 1985 social-service agency program teaching displaced youths to earn a GED degree. In 2001 it became an accredited, four-year, diploma-granting high school.
The founder of Pride School Atlanta is a transgender male who has taught math and other subjects since 1992. The school will initially operate out of a church – the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Atlanta. Tuition will be about $13,000, with financial assistance available.
Pride School Atlanta will be a “Free Model school” tailored after schools in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Brooklyn. “Free Model” means students will “explore freely, think critically, and work collaboratively, across ages, to govern themselves and their school.” Brooklyn’s Free Model School embedded “education for social justice” strategies throughout its curriculum.The term “social justice” is used to agitate groups into demanding more government control of the economy, politics and culture. Social justice is a euphemism for Socialism, but Education Week defines it as “teaching kids to question whoever happens to hold the reins of power at a particular moment … [and] seeing yourself … as an actor-critic in the world around you.” Education Week, also, lists special interest groups that promote social-justice dogma and provide resources to indoctrinate teachers and students.
Social-justice is not a stand-alone course. It’s a strategy woven into every course to convey the notion that the United States is an unjust and oppressive society. Teachers are provided social justice indoctrination by nongovernment organizations, such as Teachers 4 Social Justice whose October 2008 seminar in Berkeley, California was attended by 1,000 educators.
Since Pride School Atlanta will be a Free Model school, its goal, probably, includes the graduation of social-justice student-activists trained in group-think to promote distribution of wealth, multiculturalism, environmentalism, and globalism, as well as alternate lifestyles. For Georgia Insight I’m Sue Ella Deadwyler, your Capitol correspondent.