Anoka-Hennepin School District

The transgender boy was forced to use an “enhanced privacy locker room” even though he never had a problem in the boys’ locker room.

He said that his coach and his team didn’t have a problem with him, but the school board singled him out anyway.

Today — over 2 years after that awful summer day when I first learned about the bullying and harassment that Justin faced in school on a continuous basis, and confronting the Anoka-Hennepin school board for my first time at a public meeting about what my son and other gay students like him have endured in the schools — my family is still not able to heal the way we should have been able to…

COON RAPIDS, Minn. — The parent of a gay teen who committed suicide as a result of bullying is speaking out over the decision by the Anoka-Hennepin School District to appoint a leading gay rights opponent to its newly created anti-bullying task force.

COON RAPIDS, Minn. — The Anoka-Hennepin School Board, whose district recently settled two lawsuits alleging that a former policy had contributed to a hostile environment toward LGBT students and those perceived as LGBT, has appointed a member of an anti-gay organization to join the district’s new Anti-Bullying/Anti-Harassment Task Force.

COON RAPIDS, Minn. — The Anoka-Hennepin School District on Monday night voted to accept a settlement agreement with six former and current district students who had filed two lawsuits over a policy requiring staff to remain neutral on topics related to sexual orientation.

COON RAPIDS, Minn. — Just weeks after denouncing a Rolling Stone article on bullying and teen suicide as a “brutal and distorted attack,” the Superintendent of the Anoka-Hennepin School District in suburban Minneapolis now says “there can be no doubt that in many situations bullying is one of the contributing factors” to suicide.

COON RAPIDS, Minn. — The Anoka-Hennepin school board, which oversees the state’s largest school district, has adopted a new policy that replaces a policy that required teachers to stay neutral in matters relating to sexual orientation — a policy critics called a “gag rule” that constrained teachers from dealing with harassment and bullying of LGBT students.

MINNEAPOLIS — Anoka-Hennepin School District Superintendent Dennis Carlson has angrily denounced an article published last week by Rolling Stone, in which the magazine highlighted the rash of teen suicides that occurred within the school district over the past three years, and the links some of those deaths had to anti-gay bullying.

For nearly three years, people living in the suburban Minnesota’s Anoka-Hennepin area have been dealing with not only a rash of LGBTQ youth committing suicide, but a cultural environment that at times seems nearly a war zone as the greater LGBTQ community and its supporters have squared off against the small but well-funded virulently anti-gay conservatives.