Well, exuberance changes to anger. The School System has retracted the copy of the Student and Parent Handbook that they published on-line this morning. Supposedly the Oklahoman will have the story tomorrow, but here's my understanding of events.

For ten years folk, including Joe Quigley, have been advocating for the inclusion of sexual orientation in the school's non-discrimination and harassment policies. I have spoken to the School Board three times on this issue, just in the year and a half that I've been here.

This summer when the committee to re-write the handbook was named, we were excited to learn that Joe Quigley was a faculty representative and that Dr. Terri Miller, Asst. Principal of NW Classen, was also on the committee -- two openly gay people who had long advocated for this change.

According to Joe, when the committee got to this portion of the handbook, the recommendation was brought to change the language by another member of the committee, not either himself or Dr. Miller. The committee agreed that the change needed to be made and drafted various wordings for the school to consider.

For months the publication of the Handbook has been delayed (normally it comes out before school starts). Dr. Miller had continued to work, after the committee was done, to assure that the final language included sexual orientation; she was quite confident that it would be adopted.

Today when the handbook was published on-line, the paragraph I quoted in my previous e-mail was noted by many, exuberant e-mails and phone calls circulated, and the press began reporting. I, for one, noticed that there was an odd discrepancy -- on page 10 there was a non-discrimination/harassment policy that included sexual orientation and on page 16 there was a policy that did not include it.

When The Oklahoman called the school system while working on their story about the change, the spokesperson responded that she didn't know what they were talking about and when alerted to what the system had published this morning, I guess the administration freaked. They pulled the on-line version of the handbook this afternoon.

The story I was told by one source is that the system is saying it was a mistake, that that wording should have never been published. From another source I learned that they are saying that the final draft of the handbook hadn't yet been approved by the Board, so the entire thing shouldn't have gone on-line. I await the press reporting on this tomorrow.

If sexual orientation is not included this year, then it means that the Board has intentionally overruled the recommendation of the committee whose assignment it is to write the handbook and that they have retracted a policy that the school system itself published. This year they will not be able to use the excuse that they are covering all students and don't need to add language, because this year they have chosen to subtract language that would have protected students. Though we knew all along that it was their prejudice motivating their votes, it becomes flagrantly apparent now. Clearly their prejudices outweigh protecting students -- a violation of their jobs and a betrayal of the public trust with which they've been entrusted.