The Alliance School

Ashley Werner does not mince words when describing her experience as a lesbian at Milwaukee's Pulaski High School.

"If you are even remotely different, (the students) harass and make fun of you," Werner said. The 17-year-old junior said she is teased, called names and singled out almost every day. The situation was no better when Werner attended Clintonville High School as a freshman and sophomore. "I decided that I had had enough with Clintonville and moved down here," Werner said.

Werner hopes her situation will improve next year. She plans to attend the Alliance School, a charter high school that will focus on students who feel discriminated against or bullied. That might be a Goth student, a painfully shy student or a gay one. All three have enrolled in the school, which plans to open in August.

The school will be the first of its kind in the state, and possibly the nation, its founders say.

This is a bad idea for a number of reasons, but these three stick out:
1. When did schools stop punishing students for this sort of crap? Look, teasing and harassment are a part of growing up (which many adults fail to realize), but it appears that some of the more severe instances go unpunished these days. Schools need to crack down on this nonsense, in addition to a number of other things.
2. Bullying and harassment, while generally wrong, tend to serve a greater purpose by curbing craziness that might otherwise appeal to the typical student. For example, the Goths. Students shouldn't harass other students just because they look goofy. But then again, a little bit of harassment goes a long way in curbing the level of goofiness.
3. Society is specialized enough as it is. One of the few places that this specialization is somewhat minimized is in the public schools (which is one of the reasons I send my kids to public schools). Going to school with kids that have different racial, economic, religious, philosophical, etc., backgrounds help socialize kids to those differences...which ironically leads to greater cohesion and uniformity. That has been the experience of this nation...the melting pot. The Milwaukee School System doesn't seem to care about that.