US Department of Education – LGBTQI Toolkit

The US Department of Education has decided that basic education is no longer it’s focus. Now it’s time to help schools focus on LGBTQI. We’ll pull some quotes from the document but it case you want to review it yourself here’s the link:  Document

The document is a PDF so you should be able to download and open directly from the source. Following are actual verbatim wording from the report.

Table of Contents

• U.S. Department of Education: Supporting LGBTQI+ Youth and Families in School
• U.S. Department of Education Q&A Resource on Student-Led Groups to Support LGBTQI+ Students and Allies
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Division of Adolescent and School Health: LGBTQ-Supportive School Policies and Practices Help All Students Thrive
• U.S. Department of Justice: Community Relations Service
• U.S. Department of Justice, FBI: Hate Crimes Threat Guide

U.S. Department of Education – Supporting LGBTQI+ Youth and Families in School

The U.S. Department of Education (Department) is committed to helping schools and districts provide welcoming, safe, and supportive educational environments for all students, including students who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or intersex (LGBTQI+), and students with LGBTQI+ parents and family members. Recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that LGBTQ+ and transgender youth experience more bullying and violence, and as a result of stigmatization and discrimination, are more likely to experience depression and other mental health challenges than their peers.

U.S. Department of Education Q&A Resource: on Student-Led Groups to Support LGBTQI+ Students and Allies

The U.S. Department of Education (Department) recognizes that student-led groups can be an important part of creating safe, inclusive, and supportive educational environments for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex (LGBTQI+) students and students with LGBTQI+ parents, friends, or family members. The Department offers this resource to provide information about the rights students have to form and participate in Gender and Sexuality Alliances (GSAs) and other similar groups.

In this graphic they comment about student mental health crisis (COVID) and then conflate that to mean that all students are having problems but LGBTQI have more problems. What portion of those under age 18 identify with LGBTQI? Research mostly focuses on adults. those numbers appear to range from 3.5 to 9.5%. Those under 18 focus numbers on 13-17 with those being small. The Williams School of Law offers this data: LGBT-Youth-US-Pop-Sep-2020.pdf (ucla.edu)  Why is there such a focus on young children?

Finishing thoughts…

• Should the US Department of Education take a leadership role in promoting services, identifying funding and supporting a small group of the student population?
• Is the support of the USDE disproportionate to the size of the population?
• What happened to focusing on all students and doing everything possible to help children learn and deal with individual issues as needed on a personalized basis?
• Is this what you want?

Here’s an article by the Western Journal reviewing the toolkit: Biden Admin Launches LGBT ‘Toolkit’ for Schools That Includes Some Alarming Instructions (westernjournal.com)