GLBT Profiles: Bruce Presley - My Passion for Safe Schools

GLBT Profiles: A school teacher, turned gay entrepreneur, turned donor explains what moved him to giving money to charity and focusing on youth philanthropy. And how Safe Schools South Florida become independent from GLESN.

   

By Bruce Presley | Contact Bruce Presley is the founder of Lawrenceville Press. Educated at Yale, he did graduate work under Science Foundation grants at Yale, Princeton, and Rutgers. He is the president of the board of Safe Schools South Florida and serves on the board of a new organization, Gay American Heroes. Bruce has served on the board of numerous other organizations including Saint Andrew's School, Liberty Education Forum (foundation for Log Cabin Republicans), Michael Palm Foundation, and the Victory Fund.

HOW I BECAME A DONOR

For nearly ten years I have been working to make the schools of South Florida safer for GLBT students. It is work that evolved from my long career in teaching and educational publishing.

In 1959 I graduated from Yale University as an engineer and accepted a position teaching physics at a small Massachusetts boarding school. My plan was to spend a couple of years teaching before attending graduate school, but I so loved teaching that I spent the next thirty-five years as a teacher, most of that time at The Lawrenceville School in New Jersey.

In 1972 I received a grant from the Ford Foundation to develop curricular materials for a computer programming course I was teaching. The grant resulted in my writing a textbook and then subsequently founding a publishing company, Lawrenceville Press, which continues to this day publishing computer programming and applications texts for secondary schools and colleges.

My career as an author and publisher has given me the financial resources that have allowed me to donate to and serve on the boards of a number of gay organizations - one of which is Safe Schools South Florida.

 

HISTORY OF SAFE SCHOOLS SOUTH FLORIDA

Safe Schools South Florida (safeschoolssouthflorida.org) was originally founded in 1991 as the South Florida Educator's Group. Since its inception our mission has been to train educators to intervene and prevent bullying and to empower GLBT youth by hosting leadership and gay-straight alliance conferences in South Florida, one of the largest concentrations of K-12 students in the United States.

Since we shared a common cause of making schools safer for all students, particularly lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning (LGBTQ) youth, we joined GLSEN (the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network) in 1996 with the expectation of being part of a national organization that would give us name recognition.

 

WORKING WITH GLSEN

As we grew and became GLSEN South Florida, the cost of participating as a GLSEN chapter became excessive. Many local supporters donated to the national organization in the belief that their money was being used in South Florida - it was not. We were also required to pay fees on chapter-earned revenues.

In 2006 our board of directors voted to become a stand-alone non-profit named Safe Schools South Florida for primarily financial reasons. We remain on good terms with GLSEN and will continue to make use of their considerable educational resources.

 

GROWING SAFE SCHOOLS SOUTH FLORIDA

Safe Schools South Florida has made huge strides over the past three years growing from a small, all-volunteer board and staff, offering a limited number of annual workshops in Miami-Dade, to a full-time operation with an annual budget of more than $125,000.

We have seven paid trainer consultants, twelve paid youth speakers and a range of workshop offerings from 45 minutes to 7 hours. Our trainers all have extensive experience in schools and/or adult education.

One of our trainers is a school guidance counselor who works with the student speakers teaching them to tell their stories completely and concisely and training adult facilitators to provide pre- and post-presentation encouragement and debriefing. The youths' stories are compelling and usually move the workshop attendees to want to improve the level of safety for LGBTQ students in their care.

We have four day-long conferences for teachers, counselors and administrators. These programs are registered with both the Miami-Dade and Broward school districts for in-service accreditation points as well as continuing education units (CEUs) for mental health professionals which we provide through an arrangement with SunServe Sunshine Social Services in Fort Lauderdale.

In addition to these major programs which are offered in different geographical locations around the two counties throughout the year, we provide school-based workshops to facilitate onsite staff training. We have presented to in-school educator groups ranging in size from ten to three hundred people.

We educate parents of GLBTQ youth and GLBT parents about school based resources and support. We also provide workshops for other social services agencies that work with youth and need to be aware of the unique needs of LGBTQ youth.

All workshops include a PowerPoint presentation and a packet of handouts with current statistics on anti-gay bullying; recommended courses of action to recognize and intervene in such harassment and a broad array of local and national resources available to educators to help LGBTQ students who may approach them for help.

As part of a program to train the administrative staff of the Miami-Dade County Public Schools, we have developed a comprehensive administrators' handbook as a resource for administrators to take back to their schools as a reference tool for staff.

 

WHAT'S NEXT?

As word of our programs spreads through the two school districts we currently serve, the demand for our services increases exponentially. We have not yet had to turn down any requests for assistance but that may soon happen.

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