SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA – With everything from art classes, summer school and jobs on the chopping block this year, the San Francisco school board will decide this week whether to greatly expand school services, support and instruction on issues of sexual orientation.
The decision could cost the school district, which is facing a $113 million budget shortfall over the next two years, at least $120,000 a year – enough cash to cover the salaries of two classroom teachers.
The school board is expected to vote Tuesday on the fiscally controversial resolution calling for San Francisco Unified to add a new full-time staffer to manage “lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning” youth issues in the district’s Student Support Services Department.
It also would require the district to track harassment and discrimination based on sexual orientation and distribute an educational packet to parents, encouraging them to discuss “the issues of sexuality, gender identity and safety” with their children.
That commitment probably would cost about $90,000 a year for the staffer and maybe another $30,000 for the rest.
San Francisco school officials have long backed education and support of gay and lesbian support services and recently created the nation’s first school district Web site for gay youth.
That’s in contrast to some other school districts. Last year in Alameda, for example, a torrent of controversy was unleashed over plans to introduce a 45-minute lesson on gay and lesbian issues. The lesson was eventually adopted by that school board over the objections of some parents who said it violated their rights to teach their children their opinion of such issues.
That’s not the issue in San Francisco. Money is.
Current lesbian and gay services, including the Web site and sexual orientation curriculum, are funded by outside grants that aren’t guaranteed year to year.
But it’s not enough, said school board member Sandra Fewer, who wrote the resolution with help from the Student Advisory Council and the city’s Human Rights Commission.
“It’s not like we don’t have any money,” she said. “It means we have to prioritize our monies.”
With the district’s looming $113 million shortfall, few district programs or services will survive unscathed.
“There’s not enough money in the general fund for the general purposes,” board member Jill Wynns said. “Just add (this) to the $113 million deficit.”
Having said that, Wynns said she doesn’t know how she’ll vote Tuesday.
“I don’t want to vote against it,” she said.
While San Francisco is considered generally a safe haven for gay and lesbians, harassment and bullying are still common in schools, according a district survey.
In 2007, 77 percent of the district’s students said they heard other students making harassing remarks based on sexual orientations, and nearly half said they never heard staff respond to such remarks. Nearly 80 percent of fifth-graders said their peers use the phrases “fag,” “dyke” or “that’s so gay.”
The resolution would commit funding to maintain the expanded programs no matter what but also require district officials to seek outside funding whenever possible.
“We should set aside and commit money,” Fewer said. “If we can say that this is a budget priority during one of the biggest budget cuts of our time, we’re really saying this is” important.
from The San Francisco Chronicle

Adam Bouska photo

The biggest open secret in the landmark trial over same-sex marriage being heard in San Francisco is that the federal judge who will decide the case, Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker, is himself gay.
Many gay politicians in San Francisco and lawyers who have had dealings with Walker say the 65-year-old jurist, appointed to the bench by President George H.W. Bush in 1989, has never taken pains to disguise – or advertise – his orientation.
They also don’t believe it will influence how he rules on the case he’s now hearing – whether Proposition 8, the 2008 ballot measure approved by state voters to ban same-sex marriage, unconstitutionally discriminates against gays and lesbians.
“There is nothing about Walker as a judge to indicate that his sexual orientation, other than being an interesting factor, will in any way bias his view,” said Kate Kendell, head of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, which is supporting the lawsuit to overturn Prop. 8.
As evidence, she cites the judge’s conservative – albeit libertarian – reputation, and says, “There wasn’t anyone who thought (overturning Prop. 8) was a cakewalk given his sexual orientation.”
State Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, who has sponsored two bills to authorize same-sex marriage that were vetoed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, said that as far as he’s concerned, Walker’s background is a nonissue. “It seems curious to me,” he said, that when the state Supreme Court heard a challenge to Prop. 8, the justices’ sexual orientation “was never discussed.”
Leno added, “I have great respect for Judge Walker, professionally and personally.”
Walker has declined to talk about anything involving the Prop. 8 case outside court, and he wouldn’t comment to us when we asked about his orientation and whether it was relevant to the lawsuit.
Many San Francisco gays still hold Walker in contempt for a case he took when he was a private attorney, when he represented the U.S. Olympic Committee in a successful bid to keep San Francisco’s Gay Olympics from infringing on its name.
“Life is full of irony,” the judge replied when we reminded him about that episode.
And did he have any concerns about being characterized as gay?
“No comment.”
Shortly after our conversation, we heard from a federal judge who counts himself as a friend and confidant of Walker’s. He said he had spoken with Walker and was concerned that “people will come to the conclusion that (Walker) wants to conceal his sexuality.”
“He has a private life and he doesn’t conceal it, but doesn’t think it is relevant to his decisions in any case, and he doesn’t bring it to bear in any decisions,” said the judge, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitive nature of the Prop. 8 trial.
“Is it newsworthy?” he said of Walker’s orientation, and laughed. “Yes.”
He said it was hard to ignore the irony that “in the beginning, when (Walker) sought to be a judge, a major obstacle he had to overcome was the perception that he was anti-gay.”
In short, the friend said, Walker’s background is relevant in the same way people would want to know that a judge hearing a discrimination case involving Latinos was Latino or a Jewish judge was ruling in a case involving the Anti-Defamation League.
Walker, by the way, didn’t seek out the Prop. 8 case – it was assigned to him at random.
If the judge decides that Prop. 8 is unconstitutional, supporters of the measure are sure to take it to the federal appeals court and the U.S. Supreme Court, if necessary. Kendell expects that if that happens, the measure’s proponents will make an issue of the judge’s sexual orientation – at least in the public arena.
Not so, said Andy Pugno, general counsel for the group that sponsored the Prop. 8 campaign.
“We are not going to say anything about that,” Pugno said.
He was quick to assert, however, that Prop. 8 backers haven’t gotten a fair shake from Walker in court. He cited both the judge’s order for the campaign to turn over thousands of pages of internal memos to the other side and Walker’s decision to allow the trial to be broadcast – both of which were overturned by higher courts.
“In many ways, the sponsors of Prop. 8 have been put at significant disadvantage throughout the case,” Pugno said. “Regardless of the reason for it.”
from The San Francisco Chronicle
*
*