Respect for All

Dear New Yorker,

Raising our children free of hate and prejudice should be among our highest priorities.

Last Friday I, along with the New York City Department of Education, announced a new initiative that will expand and strengthen the City's efforts to combat bullying and bias-based harassment in our schools.

These measures to stop bullying represent a significant expansion of Respect for All, a program that began in 2007 to combat harassment in schools on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, race, color, ethnicity, national origin, religion, gender, or disability.

While Respect for All has already demonstrated some success, my office worked with advocates to look for ways to expand and improve upon the program.

The newly expanded initiative will extend training programs to all elementary school teachers and counselors; provide principals with additional guidance in creating anti-bullying plans; and make creation of a safe and supportive learning environment factor into school evaluations. Parents will now have the opportunity to review principals' Respect for All plans to help determine which school environment is right for their children.

These new measures will train more teachers and hold principals more accountable.
In addition, I will pursue federal and private funding to develop, pilot and evaluate new staff trainings that could feasibly train every teacher in the New York City public school system, as well as funding to support development and implementation of new student lesson plans.

Below are links to two articles about the new initiative from Gay City News and the Staten Island Advance:

http://www.gaycitynews.com/articles/2009/10/02/gay_city_news/news/doc4ac57e4daa77b919442362.txt

http://www.silive.com/news/advance/index.ssf?/base/news/1254554119107230.xml&coll=1


To report an incident of harassment in a New York City public school, please contact the Office of School and Youth Development at (718) 935-4357. You can also e-mail them directly at respectforall@schools.nyc.gov.


Thank you.

Sincerely,

Christine C. Quinn

Speaker

New York City Council