Bullying of LGBTQ students on the rise this year according to high school principals

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Nearly half of the public high school principals who participated in a new nationally representative survey say they faced efforts from parents or the broader community to “challenge or limit LGBTQ+ students’ rights” during the 2021–2022 school year. The new study’s results suggest that adult efforts to limit LGBTQ+ students’ rights has led to increased bullying of LGBTQ+ students in schools.

During the summer of 2022, the Institute for Democracy, Education and Access at UCLA and the Civic Engagement Research Group at UC Riverside surveyed 682 public high school principals and found that culture war issues have their jobs increasingly difficult.

As NPR reports, policies and practices related to LGBTQ+ students’ rights were among the topics that 69 percent of those surveyed said led to “substantial political conflict” with parents or members of their communities.

Researchers found that principals in narrowly divided purple districts were almost twice as likely as those in more conservative or liberal areas to say they faced multiple efforts to limit LGBTQ students’ rights.

A similar 2018 survey found that…

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