Young Activist Paves Way for Arizona Schools

Bullying in our schools, especially against those students who are, or perceived to be part of the LGBT community has in many instances, led to extremely unfortunate results including suicide. Yet time and time again there have been reports of faculty and staff ignoring incidents of bullying, specifically when targeted at LGBT youth.

Caleb Laieski, a 15 year-old from Arizona is says he has been a target of such bullying and that his school provides a prime example of those in authority ignoring the abuse. Fortunately, Caleb was able to stand up and speak out against the lack of protections in the school district’s policy and it looks as though his efforts may be paying off.

Below is a video of Laieski speaking out to the news about his experiences and why including protections are so important

Now, as reported by Lisa Halverstadt of The Arizona Republic, with the support of the ACLU, the youth has been able to convince the school district to change their policy against bullying to include LGBT and minority students. It’s been reported the Dysart Unified School District in Arizona has updated its student handbook to include protections for LGBT students as well as place restrictions on unwarranted comments or harassment based on biases and attitudes towards actual or perceived sexual orientation, immigration status, or other “perceived or actual personal characteristics” and will consider such events as hate or bias-related incidents. However upon viewing the online handbook, the revisions do not yet appear.

Although Laeiski will not be returning to Willow Canyon High School, he is grateful for proposed changes in the policy and is hopeful the handbook revisions make a difference. Laeiski stated: “I’m hopeful that it will be enforced and that it will make a change for all students.”

Arizona’s ACLU legal director, Dan Pochoda, stated the organization that even though no meetings have been arranged, the organization plans to set up meetings with the school district regarding possible sensitivity and training programs for the staff and students. He also stated they feel handbook revisions were a “good first step"