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An LGBTQ activist organization awarded more than 70 public and charter schools throughout the U.S. and Canada thousands of dollars to promote gender ideology, support “Gender Sexuality Alliance” (GSA) clubs and put on Pride Week celebrations, according to the group’s website.
Throughout 2023, the “It Gets Better Project” has awarded at least 56 U.S. and 15 Canadian public and charter schools $10,000 each for a total of $625,000 in grants to fund LGBTQ initiatives, according to the organization’s website. Some school districts throughout the country are using the grants they received to fund “gender transition closets” and work with with the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a group that describes itself as a “leading-edge Order of queer and trans nuns,” to take transgender students “back-to-school shopping.”
“The group is funding programs and curricula that are inappropriate for children and certainly inappropriate for classrooms in public schools,” Erika Sanzi, director of operations at Parents Defending Education (PDE), told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “The fact that they funded a program for a public school to work with the anti-Catholic organization Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence shows that the group is more than willing to work with those who practice bigotry against Americans who think and believe differently from them.”
Impact Academy of Arts and Technology, a charter school in California, was awarded a grant to work with the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence to host a “back-to-school shopping” event for transgender and nonbinary students, the “It Gets Better Project” states. The charter school is also using the grant to create a gender-transitioning “wardrobe” and host an LGBTQ+ community day.
The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence came under fire after a Major League Baseball team, the Los Angeles Dodgers, announced they would honor the group at its annual Pride night.
In Alabama, Selma High School is using its $10,000 grant to fund a book club that will read literature featured around LGBTQ themes, the “It Gets Better Project” states. The high school plans to use the funds to take students on a field trip to a “queer heritage site.”
E.C. Glass High School in Lynchburg, Virginia, plans to use its grant to promote its Gender Sexuality Alliance (GSA) club to create a “safe room,” the LGBTQ organization’s website states. The funds will also be used to purchase more LGBTQ books for the school’s library.
Seattle Public Schools, one of the largest school districts in the country, received a grant to support a “community and culture conference” that is aimed at black indigenous people of color (BIPOC) LGBTQ students, the “It Gets Better Project” website reads. A school in Missouri is using $10,000 to create a gender-transition closet, an initiative that has been known in other schools to provide LGBTQ students with tucking tape, chest binders and stand-to-pee devices to help with their gender transitions, though its unclear if these products will be in the Missouri school closet.
The Arts and College Preparatory Academy, a charter middle and high school in Ohio, is using the $10,000 grant from the “It Gets Better Project” to create a “Queer Student Union” to host events about queer history and pride, the website shows. In Louisiana, Benjamin Franklin High School is spending its grant to create a “QCenter” which will encourage “queer joy and uplift LGBTQ+ students.”
An Alabama public charter school, the Magic City Acceptance Academy, was given thousands to create a “Pride Garden,” the “It Gets Better Project” states. The proposal for the grant notes that more than 50 percent of students at the academy are a part of the LGBTQ community.
“As the head of Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) noted in a recent interview with Politico, ‘GSAs and other student clubs where young people can practice leadership’ are a key pillar of activists’ engagement with children in schools,” Nicole Neily, president of PDE, told the DCNF. “‘It Gets Better’ is one of many programs that exist in K-12 schools, and families deserve to know both about their existence and the source of the funding.”
