GHS assistant principal says teachers are satisfied with action
taken against harassment
Gilroy – After learning that the school board has banned teacher participation in the Day of Silence, community members still wondered aloud: what consequences would fall on the shoulders of those who chose to ignore the mandate?
Although Gilroy High School teacher Sally Enriquez vowed in February that she and the other teachers who participated in the national protest last April are “still gonna do it,” this year, district officials said that’s no longer true.
GHS Assistant Principal Greg Camacho-Light said he has met with the educators and they are not going to participate in the Day of Silence. The high school administrator said Enriquez was concerned that GHS had not done enough to deal with the issue at hand, which was harassment of gay students.
But after explaining in detail what action GHS has taken, such as staging two employee workshops on intolerance and informing students “you’re so gay” slang will not be tolerated, the teachers were satisfied. What will happen to teachers who still participate is a non-issue, he said.
“Directives – you don’t see them ignored,” Camacho-Light said. “To go completely against a directive, it doesn’t happen … I understand people worrying, but I don’t think they should be concerned. I think we should move forward and help our kids (remain) safe.”
Enriquez chose to refrain from commenting for this story. She didn’t want to be in the “limelight,” Camacho-Light said. The assistant principal said teachers didn’t feel comfortable approaching students who were harassing other students, but now that the administration has made it clear that they will back them, the educators feel more secure.
Also, locals have complained that the high school’s focus on discrimination and tolerance, is specifically tailored for gay students and doesn’t address the numerous slurs cast at Christians, overweight students and others.
“I think conservatives are more abused and assaulted at Gilroy High School and not by students, but by teachers,” Mark Zappa said, recalling at time when his daughter was singled our for her views and given a bad grade on a paper that backed President Bush.
Although the Day of Silence backers continue to claim that the high school is seeped in anti-gay sentiment, Zappa said he has yet to hear of a single incident where that was the case.
Camacho-Light said students have reported being picked on for their sexual preference or perceived preference and teachers have witnessed incidences. The incidences he specified were students saying “you’re so gay” or calling one another a “faggot.”
Of course, students are bullied for a variety of reasons and if students are picked on or slandered for being Christian, Jewish, Hispanic or whatever, there will be consequences, he said.
“What we’re trying to say is this isn’t being civil, this is being mean,” Camacho-Light said. “It isn’t just about gay and lesbian issues.”
Board policies
The district used various board policies, specifically one that refers to classroom interruptions, to bar teachers from participating in the Day of Silence. Superintendent Edwin Diaz’s report, read at Thursday’s school board meeting, stated, “Because teacher participation in the Day of Silence would distract students, Board Policy 6116 supports prohibiting teacher participation in the Day of Silence.”
The report also referred to other board policies addressing student conduct, freedom of speech, nondiscrimination/harassment and hate motivated behavior. Board Policy 6116 was adopted in June of 2005, after the board revised a 33-year-old policy.
At Thursday’s meeting, the public asked why the board had failed to act on the Day of Silence back in June when even the sentence long 1973 policy: “classroom interruptions by administrators, students or teachers must be kept to a minimum and only in case of immediate need,” was generic enough to ban teacher participation.
Last year the district consulted with attorneys to find out how and if the school board could bar teachers from participating in the protest. The board ended up allowing teachers to remain silent due to a clause that referred to academic freedom.
Board President Pat Midtgaard agreed that the original policy could have been used, but she said the board needed to revise all of the policies on the books to ensure they were enforced before moving ahead. The board subcommittee, made up of Midtgaard and Trustee Rhoda Bress, went through all the policies, revamping them and adding ones that were non-existent.
They consulted the California School Boards Association to look at sample policies and rewrote them to fit the community of Gilroy.
“So really all of these were finally falling into place in about December,” Midtgaard said. “I don’t know if there would have been anything gained by whipping out a policy in June because that was just a piece of the puzzle.”
Midtgaard also pointed out that they rewrote a CSBA policy that in essence bans teacher participation in the Day of Silence. That policy states, “The regular classroom teacher has the responsibility to carry out the standards of competency mutually defined by the administrative and teaching staff of the Gilroy Unified School District those specific duties directly associated with the particular assignment of that teacher and agreed upon by the teacher and employing agent at the time of employment.”
Bress said the board members had to tread cautiously when dealing with the Day of Silence to ensure what was in place and because they had received legal advice. Still, Bress repeated what she said at Thursday’s meeting, that the board dropped the ball on communication.
“I believe that we should have communicated earlier about where we were on this issue and what our intent was,” she said. “And the fact that we didn’t do that in a more timely way led to some mistrust.”
The Day of Silence
The Day of Silence, on April 26, is a student-led protest sponsored by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education
Network wherein participants take a day-long vow of silence to recognize and protest the discrimination and harassment experienced by gay students and their friends.
