School leaders, teachers, counselors and other educators brainstormed ways to help LGBTQIA+ students and staff feel safe in today’s politicized environment during ACSA’s first-ever Lead With Pride Summit, which took place May 4-6 in Oceanside.

More than 200 attendees joined sessions that centered on creating districtwide systems of support for families, students and staff; implementing Genders and Sexualities Alliances (GSA); and dismantling homophobia. Keynote speakers Amy Schneider and Jon Paul Higgins headlined the Thursday and Friday sessions, respectively, and shared powerful accounts of their experiences with their own identities.

“I spent decades being wrong about one of the fundamental aspects of myself — my own gender,” said Schneider, who came to fame in 2021 when she set the second-longest win streak in “Jeopardy!” history. She said that while growing up, she was unaware that it was possible to identify as transgender, noting she wished her teachers had told her that transgender people existed. When she came out, she felt free.

She encouraged attendees to “come out” as well and show others their “truth” — their real identities and feelings.

“Living a lie isn’t really living at all,” Schneider said. “After a lifetime of worrying about what people think of us, we realize we don’t care.”

On Thursday evening, Carlsbad Unified School District Superintendent Ben Churchill moderated a panel of San Diego County-area students who discussed safety in schools and what educators can do to help LGBTQIA+ students feel welcomed and accepted.

“When you say you support us, show us that you mean it,” said Paola Simi, who attends Poway High School. “I have experience with teachers being outright intolerant and inconsiderate.”

Writer and social justice educator Jon Paul Higgins (pronouns: they/them) kicked off the Friday morning sessions with their keynote address. They began their remarks by saying: “Today is not a conversation about trauma. I’m not going to talk about all the terrible things that happened to me. Ultimately, that’s not what my job is.”

Higgins provided a useful acronym, “OUT” — which matched Lead With Pride’s theme of “Out!”— that stands for Organic relationships, Understanding and Trust. Using the OUT method can help youth feel “safe and brave,” they said.

“If you have a youth who is openly queer at your institution or job, and they’re telling you about their experience, something you did or said opened them up to trust you,” Higgins said. “When they trust you, that’s a big deal.”

During the Friday breakout sessions, Superintendent-Principal Lark Doolan of Peninsula Union School District, who came out as the first transgender public school superintendent in the country, gave a presentation on the concept of the “Gender Galaxy,” which helps break out of the notion that gender is binary.

“Is there only one way to be a tree? No; there are so many types of trees in the world,” Doolan said during his session. “And then would we say: Are there only one or two ways to be a human? ... Gender is an aspect of nature. There are more than one, two or three genders. There are so many.”

Doolan summed up many of his remarks with one key phrase: “Make peace with discomfort.”

“It’s OK not to know things,” he said. “Keep being courageous about learning and growing.”