Have A Wonderful 2018-19 School Year, Trans Family!

The school year gets started for ten Houston area school districts including the Alief one I now live in tomorrow.   But the events in Achille, OK have me thinking about our trans kids getting ready to start school either tomorrow or over the next few weeks. 

And Maddie, you and your family are in our collective thoughts as you start the school year in Achille today.  We hope it gets much better for you as the year continues and those transphobic adults are punished. 

It also has me pissed about the move Secretary of Miseducation Betsy DeVos pulled in which they announced back in February they would not be acting on bathroom discrimination complaints filed by transgender students

But back to discussing this school year that is about to start.

Trans kids, your Aunt Monica wants you to know that you are not only loved by me and your trans elders, we will fight with every fiber of our beings for your humanity and your human rights.  We will also fight for your most important right of getting a quality education free from harassment by you fellow students or their transphobic parents

We will also fight tooth and nail for those of you who wish to participate in extracurricular activities so that those of you who have the ability and talent to excel in sports can do so.

So run for class president.   Try out for whatever team you wish.  Run for homecoming or prom king and queen   Run for cheerleader. because we trans elders and our accomplices will be solidly in your corner rooting for your success.

We know beyond a shadow of a doubt that if you are left alone to handle your education business, you will excel and thrive because you are #TransExcellence personified.

Also keep in mind that standing up for you trans selves can also lead to human rights advances for our entire community.

While we are in a tough environment to grown up trans, we have gone through far worse periods in our history as trans people and survived it.  This Trump misadministration will eventually go away as you elder work to make him a one termer.   Also keep in mind that your best revenge against the folks who hate you is to hold your head up high, be unapologetically proud of being trans, and be better students and human beings than they are.

As this 2018-19 school year begins, I'm looking forward to seeing and writing about the historic trails you will blaze over the next few months that inspire me to work harder to be a better role model for you. 

No matter what happens in this 2018-19 school year, know that we unconditionally love you and are rooting for your scholastic success.  Your trans elders and I also hope you have a school year as wonderful and fabulous as we know you trans kids all are, whether you're starting pre-K, elementary school, middle school, high school, college or graduate school.

Have a wonderful 2018-19 school year, trans family.
 

Have A Wonderful 2017-18 School Year TBLGQ Family!

August 28 would have been the start of the school year for my niece and other HISD school kids but Harvey changed that for the time being.

September 11 became the new start date for kids across HISD and my trans nieces and nephews in HISD and other Houston area school districts that had already started classes but were interrupted by the unwanted arrival of Harvey in the area.

The same happened for our college students in the Houston area, and UH, TSU and Rice restarted classes on September 5

The 2017-18 school year has already gotten off to a great start with the elite HBCU women's school Spelman College announcing they will be admitting trans feminine students starting in the 2018-19 school year.

My sisters Chyna Fierro, Amirage Shively and Sharron Cooks are furthering their educations at UTEP, U of L and Temple respectively, and I wish them and all trans and gender variant people doing so at the collegiate level a wonderful school year.

I hope I get the opportunity to write about more of our trans kids across the country breaking barriers and becoming homecoming or prom kings and queens, playing their fave sport as their true selves, making a cheerleading squad,  kicking butt in an academic contest, or becoming their school's valedictorian or salutatorian..

It's my hope you also just get through this school year and make new friends, get your education, and not have to deal with bullies, be they the school, faculty, administrative or right wing parental kind.  

I'm also giving my TBLGQ fam who are college professors, teachers and instructors some love as well who are doing the work of teaching the next generation of students.  By doing so, you are committing a revolutionary act along with the trans students being in class and getting their educations.

Whether you do so openly as your true selves or are nondisclosed, continue to do what you do in terms of kicking knowledge to the kids as higher education comes under increasing attack from the conservafools and the faith based fools with Betsy DeVos ensconced as the new Secretary of (mis)Education continue their rush to idiocracy by attacking public education.

Here in the Lone Star State, having failed at the legislative level twice since January to get their anti-trans bans in place, the Texas Axis of Intolerance hatemongers are now shifting targets to attack the school districts.

They have already tried and failed to stop pro-TBLGQ policies from being put in place in San Antonio ISD.

Happy 2017-18 school year TBLGQ family.  Whether you are starting your first day of elementary school or your first day of graduate school, I hope that you get through it with minimal drama and maximum opportunities to learn, expand your minds, make friends and grow as human beings.

May the same thing happen for your classmates, administrators, faculty and parents.

Saving JJ

Figures that a bunch of stuff would blow up as I'm scrambling to replace my computer.

One of the things that has come up during the week my computer died is the shocking news that the HISD board wants to consolidate my alma mater Jesse H. Jones High ironically with the school I was zoned to in Ross S. Sterling.

Next to Jack Yates (which I still sarcastically refer to as Burger King High because BK's 1970's work uniforms were in Yates' gold and red school colors) Ross Sterling is our biggest rival.  

The district football game we played against each other was nicknamed the 'South Park Super Bowl' and I'm happy to note that during my time walking JJ's halls we Falcons never lost to to the Raiders.   I still bow to Galen Gillum every time I see him at our reunions for saving me from a year of trash talking from my neighborhood by kicking the school record 38 yard game winning field goal in the 1979 game that JJ won 22-20.

You've seen some of my JJ themed posts on the blog, read me bragging about my old school's athletic exploits, and discussing my reunion with the Class With Class, JJ's class of 1980 of which I am a proud member.

But my school which has been open since 1959, counts former HPD police chief Elizabeth Watson, actress JoBeth Williams, NFL all pros Darrell Green and Alfred Williams, NBA baller Daniel Gibson and countless doctors, attorneys, business people, and a human rights activist and blogger amongst its alumni is on the verge of of having its doors shut forever.

In the upcoming agenda meeting at 4:00 PM CST Monday and the HISD school board meeting on Thursday at 5 PM a proposal is being floated to consolidate the two high schools in the wake of the just passed bond issues that allocates $72 million to tear down and rebuild Sterling's campus that opened in 1965. 

The plan is to move the 888 students currently on the Sterling campus to Jones' campus in the fall while theirs is being rebuilt.  Once construction is complete, they and the 451 students currently on JJ's campus will be combined into a new school.


Of course, that plan is not sitting well with either alumni group and especially the parents in South Park who would have to send their kids several miles away from South Park to Sterling or whatever they rename the combined school.

Two of the suggestions for the renamed school are Martin Luther King Jr HS and Barack H Obama HS.  Others have suggested it be named for an African-American Houstonian or Texan.

In case you're wondering TransGriot readers, Barbara Jordan's name already graces a Houston high school.

There were two meetings held Tuesday night at Jones and Sterling in which peeps voiced their less than enthusiastic response to the plan.    There's also a Facebook group of Jones and Sterling alums working together to put a third option on the table of keeping both schools open and enhancing the programs available at both schools.

Much of the hostility on the JJ end is the fact that popular programs like the Hotel and Restaurant management one, the International Baccalaureate one, and the Vanguard one that drew me to the school have been stripped away from the Jones campus.  The way the Vanguard programs was moved in 2002 despite opposition to it from the neighborhood and alums, the messing with Lawrence Allen, one of the schools popular principals (and a JJ Class of 80 alum) during the early 2K's that was the flimsy pretext used by predominately white Vanguard parents groups to force the program off campus also didn't engender warm and fuzzy feelings toward HISD.  

It has led to an air of justified side-eyed suspicion toward HISD's motives in all this especially since Jones alumni, students and parents have the attitude that once again, JJ is being screwed in all this..  It also doesn't help that since the retirement of our longtime principal Arthur L Pace, there has been instability in the principal's chair that has led to six people occupying it in a five year span and last year at a neighborhood meeting at Worthing HS when the question of asked of Superintendent Terry Grier of this possibility, the assembled crowd at that meeting was told there were no plans to merge the two schools. .

And they wonder why neighborhood parents have been sending their kids elsewhere? 

What the alumni and neighborhood parents are wanting from HISD is to invest the money in Jones they promised to get us to vote YES on that 2012 bond issue.   One of the other suggestions that has been floated, since they know we are still pissed off about the Vanguard program shadily being moved from JJ's campus back in 2002 to what is now called the Carnegie Vanguard campus is creating a second Vanguard campus, housing it at JJ and naming the school for Mr Pace, who was the first African-American principal of the school and the longest tenured one.

And you peeps can also hit up the HISD school board on this one as well.

Well, as many of us have asked, if you're going to do that, then why not keep Jones alive for the neighborhood kids since Vanguard was originally a 'school within a school' and until it was yanked off the campus functioned quite well in that role? 

I'll definitely be at the board meeting, and will keep y'all posted as to how this turned out.

The 30 Year JJ Reunion-Busy Second Day

It's the middle of our three day Falcon Class of 1980 reunion weekend, with a brunch scheduled in Pearland at 11:30 AM and the formal dinner that commenced at 7:30 PM

I had a previous engagement in terms of the Houston Trans community meeting about the Delgado v.  Araguz case that I wanted to get more up to speed on that was starting at 1:00 PM    I couldn't be in both places, so I decided sleep was the ticket, then got my behind up a little later than I wanted to anyway and ended up getting to the TG center in Montrose after it started.

Was an informative afternoon of getting up to speed on the Araguz case and the ramifications of it, and got to meet Nikki and have a loverly conversation with her as well.  That meeting ended a little after 3 PM, but ended up running my mouth until 4:30 PM and not getting home until almost 5 PM..

After checking e-mail and double checking the location for tonight's formal dinner I started getting into glam mode.  Falcon sisters can rock some clothes and Moni was going to come correct.   I already had a pretty good idea what I wanted to wear unlike the previous night where I changed clothes four times before I settled on the outfit I wore to Friday's event.

Our venue for 'Gazing at the Stars' was the Downtown Plaza Club on the 49th floor of One Shell Plaza.    To me it was an appropriate and perfect venue because at the time we were matriculating at JJ, 50 story One Shell Plaza was the tallest buildings in Houston.

It has long since been eclipsed by the 75 story Chase Tower and other nearby buildings that went up and were completed in rapid succession during the 80's .

Its location on the western end of downtown left us with a beautiful unobstructed view of the west side of Houston and the Galleria area just eight miles away on another picture perfect Houston fall day slowly turning into a cloudless starry night.

I arrived about 7:40 PM and walked into the venue to see a gigantic decorated number 30 in our school colors and a mini version of Sir Frederick, our Falcon mascot perched nearby on the table.  

I entered the dining section and found a table close to the video screen and projector that was set up, and began circulating around the room.  Once again greetings and hugs were exchanged, people took photos until it was time for dinner to be served.

After we got our grub on our hardworking reunion committee said a few remarks and passed out the ballots for the reunion awards before segueing into a prayer from one of the ministers in our class.

When that was completed, we launched into another tradition of our reunion weekends by  taking a moment via video presentation of remembering the classmates we lost.   That total is now up to 17 Falcons soaring above the clouds..  

I was having a wonderful time along with everybody else in the room.  My conversations this evening ran the gamut from discussing where I got my outfit and my weight loss to having a discussion with the fellas about the game we lost on a last second shot to Wheatley in '79 that cost us the District 20-4A district basketball title and losing the district title on coin flips despite beating Jack Yates in '78.

We took our reunion class photo, photos of the assorted groups of cheerleaders, class officers, cheerleaders, majorettes, band members and athletes (was on the tennis team) before the announcements for the reunion awards.

Since I'd already won the 'Most Changed Award'  in 2000, I wasn't expecting to do so again but my classmates had other ideas.   I became a repeat winner, and this time it was because I've dropped 60 pounds since the 2000 reunion.   Got a nice prize out of the deal as well..

The picnic is tomorrow at Adair Park and they will have perfect weather for it, but I won't be there.   I'm a little bummed I'm missing it, but i will however be at the homecoming game October 16 next weekend at Barnett Stadium.

But it's already been a wonderful 30 year reunion weekend for me.   Our reunion committee once again outdid themselves and topped the 2000 event.  I'm looking forward to our next one that hopefully happens in five years.

We definitely ain't getting any younger and I hope and pray we don't have more Falcons Above the Clouds between now and whenever we do meet again..