“I have not changed. I am a big sissy and proud of it!” proclaimed Elmer, the male duckling in Harvey Fierstein’s picture book for elementary school-aged children, The Sissy Duckling.

While Fierstein’s feathery protagonist saves his father from a hunter’s shotgun blast, when it comes to making GLBT affirming books available to San Diego students, no such courageous action has been forthcoming from administrators at San Diego City Schools.

According to board members of the San Diego chapter of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), Superintendent Alan Bersin gave his consent to help see that more GLBT books and texts were added. However, after months of repeated requests for comment from the Gay and Lesbian Times, Bersin failed to respond on the subject.

Mick Rabin, a teacher at Oak Park Elementary School and GLSEN San Diego board member, has largely led the charge to make up for the paucity of GLBT materials. Though straight, Rabin said he sees the value in adding books to his curriculum that portray GLBT people and historical figures in a positive light, along with other ethnic and minority groups.

“(I’m) trying to get books into the curriculum that present a normal picture of the LGBT community,” said Rabin; “to give teachers an opportunity to share those books, keep them in their own libraries or put them in school libraries and then have kids check them out and ask the questions that go along with it…. It’s not been easy.”

Though Rabin has ordered books for his own school, one of his biggest challenges has been trying to get GLBT-affirming books into the Instructional Media Center (IMC), a warehouse from which San Diego County teachers can check out books and texts for use in their classrooms.

According to Darlene Bates, program manager for the IMC, there was once a sizeable stock of GLBT books.

“It was quite a collection,” noted Bates, who said the collection was eventually moved to the San Diego County Health Department, where it was added to the “life skills” section.

When contacted as to the whereabouts and availability of the books, Bruce Ward, director of physical education, health and athletics for San Diego City Schools, said there was no such collection currently at the health department.

According to Ward and Bates, in 1996, a diversity committee amassed the books that were previously housed at the IMC.

“When Mr. Bersin came in, all those committees district-wide were disbanded,” said Ward. “When the [diversity committee] disbanded, … that material was then dispersed among the resource teachers in the health department. Some ended up at sites (schools).”

Ward said all of those in the health department who would have received the books have since retired.

“If there was any material from 1996 to now, it pretty much is gone,” he said.

Rabin recalled seeing a stock of GLBT books at the IMC prior to 2000, though he said they were not available to teachers. According to Rabin, an IMC librarian took him “back into a corner of her office. There was just a stack of [GLBT] books that had been sent in from different publishers. I said, ‘How come they’re not available?’ She said, ‘Well, they need to be reviewed.’ I said, ‘So are they being reviewed?’ and she said, ‘No.’”

Rabin was told that the books had to be approved by an administrative review board before they could be added to the IMC. Though he was finishing grad school at the time, Rabin has since joined that board.

Upon attending an initial orientation to become a member of the review board, Rabin said the resource librarian conducting the orientation told him she wouldn’t know where to go about obtaining GLBT books. “Just sort of the way she treated it seemed like she was going to be more of an obstructionist than a person who was going to go out of her way to help out,” he said.

Since then, another teacher at Oak Park Elementary has joined the board and is working with Rabin to get GLBT books reviewed and on the approved list.

Shortly after joining the review board, Rabin began corresponding with Bersin. “Over the course of the last year we’ve had some e-mails and some of the people that work under him have been in touch with me about how these books can get reviewed and put on special lists that mean they’re acceptable for our school libraries…. He (Bersin) did commit to getting these avenues opened up…. He’s made the commitment to call certain people on different committees to get the ball rolling on getting these books more widely available.”

According to Rabin, inclusion of approved GLBT books at the IMC may give teachers further incentive to broach GLBT issues. Because many teachers aren’t aware of what’s permissible, he said they tend to steer clear of any potentially controversial material in their curriculum. “If the IMC carried these books, so that they were widely available to everybody in the district, then a teacher would be much more likely to go out and buy a book themselves and put it into their personal library…. If anybody ever came up to them and said, ‘How come you’ve got this book in your class?,’ the teachers could very easily point to the IMC and say, ‘This is on the recommended reading list by San Diego City Schools. It’s gone through a review process.’”

Steven Baratte, a spokesperson for Bersin, confirmed that there are currently no GLBT-friendly or related materials at the IMC. “We have not been able to purchase any new books due to the budget,” he said.

Rabin said he gave Bersin six GLBT titles to review last year, including: The Sissy Duckling, King & King, My Two Uncles, It’s Okay to Be Different and The Harvey Milk Story.

According to Baratte, the books were absorbed into San Diego City Schools’ library system, though it is not clear if Bersin himself reviewed the books or made a recommendation on purchasing more.

“We have had quite a year, which included some major staffing issues and, to be honest, I think some of this had fallen through the cracks,” said Baratte prior to press time. “Mr. Bersin is out this week. I know this is an important issue for him, and the district has done some very positive steps, including gay- and lesbian- issue training of staff.”

Rabin said he would be contacting Bersin again after the first of the year. “Some time ago, he (Bersin) had marched with GLSEN in the Pride parade,” said Rabin. “I took that to mean that he was committed to kind of leveling the playing field a little bit and making it so that we don’t have an invisible group of people.”

“San Diego City Schools has some gay-positive material on their reading list and we’re working with them to get more onto the list. There’s certainly teachers that are including it on their own,” added GLSEN San Diego Chair Jeremy Kraut-Ordover. “The change is going to come from Sacramento; it’s going to have to be a change in the state curriculum.”