What is the LGBTQ+ School Leaders Network? The challenging work of school leadership can often feel isolating—especially if you identify as LGBTQ+. To provide a platform of mutual support for principals and assistant principals in the LGBTQ+ community, NASSP manages a network where administrators can meet regularly to share challenges, struggles, and opportunities, and support […]
Click here to search the store. »
LGBTQ+ Students and Educators
Purpose: To affirm support for the rights, safety, and identity of all LGBTQ+ students, educators, and school leaders; acknowledge historic marginalization and institutional bias associated with LGBTQ+ individuals; state the association’s opposition to legislation and policies that discriminate against LGBTQ+ individuals; and provide recommendations for federal, state, and local policymakers and school leaders on how […]
Leading By Example: How School Principals Can Support LGBTQ Students
The following interview first appeared on the Human Rights Campaign website as a guest post contribution. As equality and acceptance continue to be top of mind for many, many school leaders continue to ask what else they can be doing to support students who face discrimination within the classroom. Ashton Mota, HRC Youth Ambassador and […]
Read This, Save Lives: Creating Safer Classrooms for LGBTQ+ Students
I was a curious student who spent my free periods talking to teachers, and I could find my way around the library blindfolded. But for most of my life, I absolutely dreaded going to school.
School Leaders Share How They Create Supportive and Inclusive Environments for LGBTQ Students
In September 2018, NASSP and the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) announced a partnership to highlight the important role that principals have in striving for educational equity, with a focus on safety and inclusion for LGBTQ students. As part of this work, Dr. Beverly Hutton, NASSP’s deputy executive director for programs and services, led a team […]
NASSP and HRC Lead School Inclusion Efforts for LGBTQ Students
NASSP and the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) have partnered to highlight the important role that principals have in striving for educational equity, with a focus on safety and inclusion for LGBTQ students. The need for culturally responsive practices that promote each student’s academic well-being is especially critical in this politically charged time. HRC’s 2018 LGBTQ […]
Navigating LGBT Issues
The Amazon TV show Transparent, centered around a transgender parent, earned an Emmy this year. Brilliant scientist Alan Turing, a gay man involved in national security, was the subject of a major motion picture in 2014. During the first Democratic presidential debate, Hillary Clinton proclaimed that society needed to do more to prevent discrimination against […]
Principal Leadership: March 2023
Features Columns & Departments
Student Centered: March 2023
I am a queer student from Kentucky. I am not out to my family, though I will be soon. I have yet to tell them not because I am afraid of their reaction, and for that reason I am incredibly grateful, but rather because I want to come out on my own terms. Throughout high […]

Recruitment and Retention Strategies to Increase School Leader Diversity
“Everywhere I looked, leadership didn’t look like me. But our students did,” says Danielle Edwards, a school leader and Spelman College alumna who sought school leadership opportunities in her school community. In the absence of guidelines and a career pathway, she relied on her network of Spelman sisters and like-minded colleagues to help her navigate […]