President Obama has appointed Kevin Jennings to work alongside Education Secretary Arne Duncan as Assistant Deputy Secretary of Education. Jennings will head the safe and drug-free schools program.

Obama could not have made a better choice for the GLBT community. Jennings founded the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network, a group that works tirelessly to assist and support gay-straight alliances at high schools around the country and raise awareness about bullying and harassment. He also has written a memoir about his own childhood called Mama’s Boy, Preacher’s Son: A Memoir of Becoming a Man, chronicling his own experiences with bias as a gay student, teacher and advocate for GLBT student equality. The appointment is the second Obama has made in the education arena that shows his commitment to furthering GLBT students’ protection: Duncan, another appointee, is also dedicated to this end.

Jennings is the point person in the Department of Education (DOE) now, and he has to build from scratch the equality, tolerance and respect that the Bush administration vanquished.

First, he needs to make the DOE a vehicle to which abused students and their parents can turn when local school officials act indifferently to student complaints of abuse. To achieve this, he can use guidelines created by the Clinton administration, which hosted a conference on bullying and other acts of intolerance.

Jennings should also make the DOE Web site accessible to students throughout the country so that when students “Google” for sites that help gay or lesbian students, the DOE site appears. The site should allow a student (with or without parental involvement) to tell the secretary of education about problems at a particular school. The DOE has a team of lawyers, most working within the Office of Civil Rights, who can investigate such complaints and has the power to impose fines on school districts and officials that fail to protect GLBT students.

The DOE also can assist with establishing gay-straight alliances on a campus, resolving bullying complaints and ensuring that school officials are not denigrating or otherwise showing hatred and disrespect to GLBT persons. (As we know, San Diego attorneys Paula Rosenstein and Bridget Wilson have been battling a local school district on this issue for more than five years, even after winning a trial court verdict in their student clients’ favor. The attorneys and their clients have incurred costs close to $500,000. Anything Jennings can accomplish in his executive capacity to help them will be more than welcome.)

Finally, the DOE has the power to refuse federal funds to school districts that fail to operate within the law, and Jennings should not hesitate to do so.

Education is the foundation of the GLBT community’s progression toward equality. The DOE – and its administrative apparatus – is still the very best and most affordable vehicle to help gay and lesbian students achieve parity, and Jennings will ensure that it does. He will resurrect a department that the Bush administration left to gather dust. Bush did not utilize the DOE to assist in any tangible way GLBT students and their parents who complained of harassment at school. Despite dozens of court decisions indicating gay students are protected by law, it refused to lift a finger when students sought help.

Now that Obama has appointed Jennings, the right-wing groups that Bush allied himself with are taking to their blogs to organize an effort to pressure Obama to “dis-appoint” him. They’re spouting the usual hyperbole used to denigrate anyone who supports gay equality. The irony is that in so doing they make the case for exactly why someone like Jennings is necessary in this role.