A new, gay-centric high school could be in the works as members of Toronto's LGBT community considered the plan on Wednesday evening.
University of Toronto student Fan Wu, the 20-year-old who proposed the idea, said the school would focus on students’ identities rather than their sexuality.
“This school would be open to people from every academic background, from every financial background, racial, religious and sexual background,” Wu told CTV Toronto on Wednesday.
The former Don Mills Collegiate Institute student presented his idea at a community meeting on Church Street.
“It’s about something more fundamental, it’s about accepting diversity,” he said.
If the plan receives support, a formal proposal could be submitted to the Toronto District School Board.
A TDSB spokesperson said the board would consider such a proposal, like they have considered proposals for other alternative schools in the past.
While a gay-centric school is only being proposed, it has already caused some controversy.
Raymond Miller, a gay man who attended high school in Toronto, said the best way to promote diversity in schools is through education.
“If there’s a bullying problem or a lack of education, you don’t take the kids who are being bullied out,” he said. “You address the problem at its core and work with those kids and those students in the school.”
An africentric alternative school opened in Toronto in 2009 and has nearly 150 students enrolled. The city’s first high school level africentric program launched in September at Winston Church Collegiate in Scarborough with only six students enrolled in the first semester.
With a report from CTV Toronto’s John Musselman
