Homosexual Teen-Agers Get Own School

Hounded out of regular New York City schools by taunts and fights, 20 high school students have enrolled in what is apparently the nation’s first public school program to teach and counsel homosexual teen-agers.

Classes began April 15 at the Harvey Milk School, named for the San Francisco official and gay activist who was murdered on Nov. 27, 1978. Classes are held in an annex of a small stone Methodist church in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village.

“Because of their sexual orientation, they were not able to make it in the high schools,” said Steve Ashkinazy, clinical director of the Institute for the Protection of Lesbian and Gay Youth. The private, nonprofit homosexual advocacy and counseling group is running the school together with the New York City Board of Education.

Chronic Truants

Ashkinazy said that most of the students--14 boys and six girls, ages 14 to 19--were chronic truants who had dropped out or been discharged from other schools. “Most have suffered harassment or physical abuse,” he said.

“These are youngsters in need,” Chancellor of Schools Nathan Quinones said at a press conference Thursday. “What do you do with a 15-year-old who is a transvestite?”

Most students at the school declined to talk Thursday. But one 14-year-old girl said that she had been expelled from a Bronx high school “because of what I am.”

“I just wouldn’t conform,” she added.

Quinones compared the new school to more than 50 other special education and off-site schools run by the city, including schools for pregnant teen-agers and drug abusers. But he acknowledged that school officials had received “constant phone calls” from angry parents who objected to spending tax dollars for a program for homosexuals.

Called Appropriate

Mayor Edward I. Koch called the school “an appropriate educational activity,” a spokesman said. “I conclude it’s preferable to have them in the classroom rather than drop out,” Koch said.

City officials estimated the program, at the Washington Square United Methodist Church, will cost about $50,000 a year. The city has assigned one full-time teacher, but Ashkinazy said that he expects to triple the school’s enrollment and enlarge the staff next fall.

Jacqueline Arkord, an assistant director of the Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center in Hollywood, called the program “imperative” for gay teen-agers who are “harassed, called up, beat up, hit and isolated.”

Bill Rivera, spokesman for the Los Angeles Unified School District, said that the city has no plans for a similar program and that he is unaware of widespread harassment of gay students.

“Certainly, we haven’t identified it as a problem in our district,” he said.