President-elect Barack Obama selected Arne Duncan as his secretary of education this morning. The 44-year-old Chicago school superintendent had previously supported a gay high school in the area.

The Advocate reports:

[Duncan] approved plans for the Pride Campus of Social Justice High School, which was set to be voted on by the school board in November, only to be pulled by organizers at the last minute after controversy.

…

In June, bolstered by grim statistics, a group of Chicago teachers, administrators, and education experts presented a groundbreaking proposal to the Chicago public school board: A new Pride Campus, affiliated with the existing Social Justice High School, eventually serving 400 to 600 students, would provide a safe and accepting place for LGBT kids and their allies.

The public charter school would have been only the third of its kind in the country, after Milwaukee’s Alliance School and New York City’s Harvey Milk High School.