Inside The South’s First School For LGBTQ Students

by Timothy Pratt

''Christian Zsilavetz stood in front of the classroom reading the school’s handwritten guidelines from a spiral notebook to his eight students, ages 8 to 17.

It was the first meeting of teachers, students and volunteers in Atlanta’s recently launched Pride School, which is billing itself as the first school in the South aimed at creating a safe learning environment for LGBTQ teachers, students, their families and allies

.Reviewing the guidelines was one of eight items on the agenda that day. The first guideline, unsurprisingly, was “No bullying.” Then there was “Respect one another.” Third, “Use correct names and pronouns.”

So began the second week of the tiny private school’s educational experiment, founded on the premise of accepting students for who they are and guided by the principles of power-sharing and student-driven decision-making that gained traction during the counterculture free schools movement of the 1960s and ’70s...''