Sep 12, 2008  |  By: CHRIS JOHNSON  | COMMENTS     

Officials from some elementary schools listed as home to gay-straight alliances are denying that such clubs exist for their students, bringing into question numbers touted by the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network.

Citing numbers from GLSEN and the U.S. Department of Education, The Advocate reported in its Sept. 9 issue that GSAs exist at 3,583 high schools, 111 middle schools and 18 elementary schools among the nation’s 126,000 public and private schools.

GSAs are school clubs that generally provide students a forum to address issues such as anti-gay harassment in schools and help promote respect for students.

GLSEN provided the Blade with a list of 17 elementary schools touted as having GSAs. The list not only identifies schools with GSAs, but also gives the registered name for the GSA at each school.
But in interviews with the Blade this week, officials at nine of the listed schools denied that their school had a GSA.

The Francis W. Parker School in San Diego, the Robert J. O’Brien School in East Hartford, Conn., and the Ethical Culture Fieldstron School in New York were among the elementary schools that denied hosting a GSA.

A spokesperson from the Friends’ Central School in Wynnewood, Pa., said elementary school students did not have a GSA, but such a club did exist for high school students.

Elissa Leonard, a Department of Education spokesperson, confirmed that The Advocate based the total number of schools throughout the United States on department information. However, she said the 126,000 number is based on old data from 1999 to 2000, and that currently there are around 130,000 schools in the United States.

Leonard said The Advocate did not base the GSA numbers on Department of Education data.
Regent Media, which owns the Advocate, did not immediately respond Wednesday to the Blade’s request for comment.

Daryl Presgraves, a GLSEN spokesperson, said the organization’s GSA tally was based on the registration of the clubs by self-identified students.

Presgraves noted that students sometimes register GSAs that later disband, leaving a defunct club on GLSEN’s books. He said some schools also could have groups informally known as GSAs that are unknown to officials.

In other cases, Presgraves said, GSAs may have to meet without officials knowing about them because the clubs would not be permitted.

“There may be a situation where people are not always aware of what’s going on with the school’s club system or with students getting together to meet after school,” he said.

Presgraves said it’s possible that a student could register a GSA even if no such club existed at their school, but he told the Blade he could not think of a reason anyone would do so.

Presgraves said he believes “the overwhelming, vast majority” of the estimated 4,000 GSAs registered with GLSEN at one point were in fact actual GSAs.

“What we have is a picture of the number of GSAs that exist, or have come to us to register at some point in time — it is not 100 percent accurate,” he said. “It is virtually impossible for an organization with our means to constantly check these schools to see they have a GSA.”

A review of the GLSEN list showed that two schools counted among the 17 elementary schools are preschools: the Douglas Early Childhood Center in Douglas, Mass., and the Widener University Childhood Development Center in Chester, Pa.

Officials at those schools told the Blade there are no GSAs operating there
.
Presgraves said the preschool GSAs may have been set up because students enrolled at the schools had gay parents who wanted a forum to talk about issues affecting their children.

Betsy Pursell, the Human Rights Campaign’s vice president for public education and outreach, said she suspects that “most people would agree that it’s perhaps not appropriate” to have GSAs in elementary schools.

Pursell, a lesbian and former high school teacher, said although students are coming out at younger ages than in previous generations, most don’t identify as gay until they are at least in middle school.

She said students are “definitely too young” to talk about their sexual orientation when they are in elementary school.

Pursell speculated that the registered elementary school GSAs could actually be parent committees for parents who want to achieve more diversity at schools.