Ronald Henry Schmidt has worked through much of his career helping LGBT youth through the difficult years of their adolescence, especially with a goal toward protecting all students from bullying and lack of support from administrators. The author came out to his administrators in his first semester in Morgan Hill Unified School District when an eighth grade student committed suicide and no one was considering the possibility that the student might have been dealing with sexual identity issues. That began an advocacy that eventually led to assisting six students at Live Oak High School in MHUSD to file a lawsuit against the district for failure to protect them from bullying over their real or perceived sexual identity, resulting in the largest settlement ever accorded in such a case at that time.
A co-founder of South Bay Chapter of the Bay Area Network of Gay and Lesbian Educators (BANGLE), he worked with Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) to create The Invisible Minority in Our Schools: Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Youth Workshop which they presented throughout Santa Clara County and up and down the state through California Teachers Association (CTA).
The author has also written extensively for the gay press in San Jose, California and co-founded the Arts Council of Gay and Lesbian San Jose.
In 2011 the author celebrated 31 years of sobriety ... and 51 years in recovery from the Catholic Church.
You can contact Ron here.
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