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Ninth-graders at Greater Latrobe School District completed a suicide awareness and prevention program about two weeks ago. Since then, “It resulted in two students coming forward with concerns about other students, which is what the message is,” said Lucinda Soltys, director of pupil services.
Consultant Ted Hoover of Pittsburgh's PERSAD Center presented the four-day Friends for Life and Signs of Suicide program, which encourages students at risk for suicide, with the support of their friends, to confide in a trusted adult — an important step in getting help to students who need it.
“A youth will reveal to another youth long before they talk to an adult,” Hoover told a small group of administrators and residents Monday during the district's monthly Conversation with the Superintendent session.
By presenting the program to all students, Hoover said, he can reach students in the LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning) community, who are especially at risk for many of the serious problems adolescents face — including bullying and suicide.
Hoover cited a 2010 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study and a 2015 survey by the National Center for Transgender Equality indicating that about one in four LGB youths will attempt suicide at some point in their lives, a rate that increases to 40 percent for those who are transgender.
Founded in 1972, PERSAD — which stands for personal adjustment — offers counseling and other services to members of the LGBTQ community and their loved ones. Hoover said the majority of calls the center receives relate to transgender issues, the latest aspect of sexual difference that communities and school districts have begun to address.
“It's so new,” he said, noting that many people don't understand transgender people and, therefore, reject that they exist. “They say, ‘If you can't explain it to me, I don't think that it's true.' ”
Much controversy focuses on school policies that determine whether students can use a restroom matching the gender with which they identify rather than their gender at birth.
“It's all about the porcelain,” Hoover said. “It's never the kids who have the problem. It's never the students. It's some adult who's projecting something.”
Soltys said she is not aware of any questions that have been raised since the Greater Latrobe School Board in August added “gender identity” as a protected category in the district's nondiscrimination policy. A handbook for staff spells out that students should have access to the restroom that “corresponds to their gender identity consistently asserted at school.” Those who want increased privacy are to have access to a single-user restroom, but no students will be required to use such a facility because they are transgender or gender nonconforming.
Hoover, who is gay and has a 27-year-old child, said heterosexual allies have played a vital role in strides the LGBTQ community has made in gaining recognition and civil rights protections.
“Allies are the backbone of the LGBT community,” he said.
That extends to schools, like Greater Latrobe, that include a chapter of the Gay Straight Alliance among their student club offerings. In Hoover's view, “The kids who need it never join it.” But he said simply knowing such a club is available lets LGBTQ students know “somebody has my back. It does make a statement about what the administration values.”
Westmoreland County has several organizations that offer support to LGBTQ residents and their allies. Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays has a Greensburg chapter (pflaggreensburg.org). It maintains a Facebook page, as do the WestCo Pride Project and the Westmoreland LGBTQ Interfaith Network.
Jeff Himler is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach him at 724-836-6622 or jhimler@tribweb.com.
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