Kevin Jennings – safe schools czar
Title: Director of Office of Safe and Drug-free Schools- Reports to: Assistant Deputy Secretary Department of Education
- Appointed: September 2009
- Mission and Responsibilities
- The Assistant Deputy Secretary for Safe and Drug-Free Schools serves as the principal advisor to the Secretary on Departmental matters related to safe and drug-free schools and character education programs, and represents the Department at national and international meetings related to safe and drug-free schools and character education. The Office administers, coordinates, and recommends policy for improving quality and excellence of programs and activities that are designed to:
- Provide financial assistance for drug and violence prevention activities and activities that promote the health and well being of students in elementary and secondary schools, and institutions of higher education. Activities may be carried out by State and local educational agencies and by other public and private nonprofit organizations.
- Participate in the formulation and development of ED program policy and legislative proposals and in overall Administration policies related to violence and drug prevention; drafting program regulations.
- Participate in interagency committees, groups, and partnerships related to drug and violence prevention, coordinating with other Federal agencies on issues related to comprehensive school health, and advising the Secretary on the formulation of comprehensive school health education policy.
- Participate with other Federal agencies in the development of a national research agenda for drug and violence prevention.
- Administer the Department’s programs relating to citizenship and civics education.
- Jennings was appointed to the position largely because of his longtime record of working to end bullying and discrimination in schools. In 1990, as a teacher in Massachusetts, he founded the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), which now has over 40 chapters at schools nationwide. He has also published six books on gay rights and education, including one that describes his own experiences as a closeted gay student.
- He made four references to his personal drug abuse in his 2007 autobiography, “Mama’s Boy, Preacher’s Son: A Memoir.” On page 103, discussing his high school years in Hawaii in the early 1980s, Jennings wrote: ”I got stoned more often and went out to the beach at Bellows, overlooking Honolulu Harbor and the lights of the city, to drink with my buddies on Friday and Saturday nights, spending hours watching the planes take off and land at the airport, which is actually quite fascinating when you are drunk and stoned.”
- The group (GLSEN) Jennings founded has also been accused of promoting homosexuality in schools. At a GLSEN conference in 2000, co-sponsored with the Massachusetts Department of Education, the group landed in hot water when it was revealed that it had included an educational seminar for kids that graphically described some unorthodox sex techniques. A state official who spoke to teens at the conference said: ”Fisting (forcing one’s entire hand into another person’s rectum or vagina) often gets a bad rap….[It's] an experience of letting somebody into your body that you want to be that close and intimate with…[and] to put you into an exploratory mode.”
- Jennings is on the board of the Union Theological Seminary, which describes itself as “progressive and evangelical.”
- One controversy from Jennings’ past concerns an account in his 1994 book, “One Teacher In 10,” about how, as a teacher, he knew a high school sophomore named Brewster who was “involved” with an “older man”: ”Out spilled a story about his involvement with an older man he had met in Boston. I listened, sympathized, and offered advice. He left my office with a smile on his face that I would see every time I saw him on the campus for the next two years, until he graduated.” And this: ”I said, ‘What were you doing in Boston on a school night, Brewster?’ He got very quiet, and he finally looked at me and said, ‘Well I met someone in the bus station bathroom and I went home with him.’ High school sophomore, 15 years old’ I looked at Brewster and said, ‘You know, I hope you knew to use a condom [audio is available here].’” The Washington Times reported in 2004 that “state authorities said Mr. Jennings filed no report in 1988.” As a Massachusetts teacher Jennings would have been legally obliged to report the situation.
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