The Burlington School District is launching a community-led LGBTQ+ task force, whose job will be coming up with a plan to create a more inclusive and safe learning environment for LGBTQ+ students at all schools in the district.
The task force will be co-chaired by a student with lived experience in the LGBTQ+ community. Half the task force members will be students and the other half adults, including teachers, administrators and parents. Anyone interested in being on the task force can apply and will be notified by late December if they have been selected.
The task force was formed because evidence shows there’s been an uptick in anti-LGBTQ+ hate speech and harassment this fall, said Autumn Bangoura, the Burlington School District’s equity instructional leader.
“We have a legal duty to pursue investigations when harassment happens in our schools,” Bangoura said. “We know that LGBTQ+ students are more likely to self-harm, more likely to die by suicide, so we have to take this really seriously.”
“We want to stop doing the reactive work and start doing the preventative work,” she said.
Sydney Russell, a seventh-grader at Hunt Middle School, said she is excited about the idea and hopes to be selected for the task force.
“They’re only looking for a certain number of kids and I want to be one of them,” Sydney said.
Sydney said she has a lot of ideas on how the school system could better support LGBTQ+ students. She said she has noticed firsthand a lack of action by teachers when students report that they are being harassed.
“Some teachers in the school, if someone will go to them and tell them, ‘Oh, this just happened, like such and such said something homophobic and it’s making me feel this way’ … the teachers are just like ‘eh, OK, whatever’; they don’t really do anything about it,” Sydney said. She also said she’s personally experienced this.
Sydney said teachers do a good job of making sure students don’t make discriminatory comments in front of them, but harassment often occurs outside of earshot of teachers.
“It wouldn’t happen in a classroom but it would happen in the bathroom where there’s no teachers,” she said.
The Burlington School District has made a particular effort this fall to create a safer environment for its LGBTQ+ students. In October, Burlington and South Burlington high schools held a drag ball at their homecoming football game in which teachers and students participated.
Bangoura said the drag ball was a catalyst for forming the task force.
“We’ve known for a while that we have to do more and do better … and when (Burlington High School English teacher) Andrew LeValley came forward about the drag ball, it actually got the superintendent really excited to create this task force, so it was like one inspiring event led to another,” Bangoura said.
The task force will focus on eliminating hate speech and harassment from schools, and on examining school curriculums to ensure that they are inclusive. That might mean assigning more books penned by LGBTQ+ authors or discussing LGBTQ+ history in more depth in the classroom. The specifics of what an LGBTQ+-friendly curriculum in Burlington schools might look like will be up to the task force.
“I know what’s best in my heart for humanity … but I also know that not everyone is ready to hear that message,” said Bangoura, who says some residents may push back against the task force. But she believes this work is critical, and she’s seen firsthand the impact of events like the drag ball.
Sydney said that, after the drag ball, one of her friends came out: “It was like a day after the drag ball and he’s like, ‘Guys, guess what, like I’m gay,’ and we were like so happy for him. It’s like, we were like happy, yelling — screaming basically — in the hallways.”
The task force will present recommendations to the school board in April 2022.
