Chicago Board to Vote on Anti-Bullying High School

Planners of Pride Campus never shied away from touting their proposed high school as a haven for gay youth seeking refuge from sometimes hostile traditional classrooms.

Kevin Jennings, founder of the New York city-based Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, poses for a photograph by New York's PS 41 in New York, Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2008.

(Kathy Willens/AP Photo)

But under mounting pressure from ministers and gay activists alike, the name has changed and the focus broadened to create a school that would be one of the nation's largest to serve any students victimized by bullying and harassment.

If approved by the country's third-largest school district Wednesday, the Social Justice Solidarity High School would join several smaller U.S. campuses aimed at serving students who have been tormented for everything from their religious beliefs to their weight.

It's a less explicitly gay version of a plan first presented to Chicago's board of education in October by schools chief Arne Duncan, whose name has been floated as a possible Education Secretary under President-elect Barack Obama. The Social Justice High School: Pride Campus was to open in 2010 and eventually serve 600 students, about half of whom were expected to identify as gay.

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The Solidarity plan has the same timeline and enrollment goals, but a different mission.

The Pride Campus mission statement to serve "the underserved population of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Questioning youth and their allies" has been replaced by one that offers protections for students regardless of "orientation," but doesn't mention sexuality.

Instead, Solidarity school aims to address "citywide concerns over violence, bullying and harassment."

The new language echoes the mission statement of Milwaukee's Alliance School, where lead teacher Tina Owen said staff have been successful in attracting — and protecting — a wide range of students, from those who identify as "Goth" to teens with disabilities.

"They find it to be a place where they can be themselves," Owen said. "It's a safe place."

But even without a mission statement aimed directly at gay youth, about 60 percent of Alliance School's 125 students identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered.