Brody's Scribbles... Louisville School Targets Student Over Her Lesbian Parents

By Michael Jones (Boston, Massachusetts) May 18 | This is proving to be a difficult week for students who have LGBT parents. First came word out of Massachusetts that a Catholic school was refusing to admit an eight-year-old boy in class because he had two moms. Now comes word from a school in Kentucky that a 12-year-old student was made fun of by her bus driver because of her lesbian parents.

But this situation gets even worse. The story goes something like this: a 12-year-old student at Crosby Middle School is riding the school bus. Some students on the bus start talking trash about gays and lesbians, and it makes the student understandably angry, given that she has two same-sex parents. The student walks up to the bus driver, a woman named Ronell Mattingly, and asks the driver to do something about all the homophobic talk.

Mattingly refused. But not only did she refuse, she thought the homophobic chatter was funny. And then, when she found out that this 12-year-old had two same-sex parents, she called the student "a contradiction." And then (as if it couldn't get any worse), the next day Mattingly made this 12-year-old student ride in the back of the bus, and wouldn't let any of her friends talk to her.

That essentially earns Mattingly the title of the most tactless school bus driver in the country. But the situation gets even worse, and ends up with this 12-year-old student suspended from the bus for three days, just for sticking up for her same-sex parents

After this bus driver called the student a "contradiction," the student got a little sassy. She called the bus driver a "jerk," and went back to her seat. Not necessarily the best thing to do, though in the grand scheme of things, the word "jerk" is itself pretty harmless, especially after a bus driver just ridiculed your parents.

But that "jerk" comment really got the Assistant Principal at Crosby Middle School in a dither. That principal, Angela Allen, called the student's parents to talk about the bus situation, and to explain why the school was justified in booting the 12-year-old girl off the bus for three days. Assistant Principal Allen told the parent that the student was being "smart." (As in smart-alecky.)

When the parent tried to explain to Principal Allen that the only reason the girl called the bus driver a "jerk" was because the driver was making fun of her family, Principal Allen told the parent that this student needs to be tougher.

"Assistant Principal Angela Allen stated my daughter should simply ignore such comments and grow some thicker skin," the parent said, according to KentuckyLGBT.org.

Now I'm sorry, but doesn't that sound a little ass backwards here? This 12-year-old student is supposed to just sit down and shut up when a bus full of kids are making homophobic comments, and an adult bus driver has the audacity to make fun of her family? Yet the bus driver blows a gasket over being called a "jerk." Am I missing something here?

Because I thought it was a bus driver's responsibility, not to mention an Assistant Principal's responsibility, to make sure that students were safe, and that they didn't have to deal with threatening, disparaging comments or name-calling. Keep in mind that the bus driver here is an adult, as is the Assistant Principal. Their response to homophobic language is to ... blame the student who complained about it, and tell her to get some thicker skin?

Talk about a school FAIL. And that's something that's not lost on the Kentucky Equality Federation, which is now working with the student and her parents to demand some justice from the school. What do they want? They want the school bus driver to be assigned to a different route, so that this student can feel safe on her bus again, and they want Assistant Principal Allen to issue an apology for her ridiculous comment that this student should just shut up and sit down when it comes to homophobic language.

The Kentucky Equality Federation will be filing official complaints in Louisville.

This is about keeping students safe. As Jordan Palmer with the Kentucky Equality Federation said, 

"The audacity of a school bus driver to say such a thing to a child is appalling and shows the bigotry gay and lesbian parents face ... The school certainly is not giving 'an environment that fosters self-discipline and self direction' as stated on their website."

This is about keeping students safe. That should be the bus driver's main responsibility, and it should be Assistant Principal Allen's job, too.

Michael Jones is a Change.org Editor. He has worked in the field of human rights communications for a decade, most recently for Harvard Law School.