Spanish teacher Kaitie Paynich has helped students at Portage Northern High School feel safe and nurtured through her efforts to strengthen the school’s Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) club and create a gender-affirming closet and free store open to all. Paynich was chosen to lead the program when it re-started in 2016.

“It was super-heartwarming to see our students advocate for a safe space for themselves and also to see the huge number of staff members who showed up to volunteer,” Paynich recalled. “We had five staff members willing to be the advisor and ultimately, I was chosen to be the lead since I am one of two queer educators in our building.”

In 2022, Paynich and her students applied for, and received, a $10,000 It Gets Better Grant to implement a gender-affirming closet in their school. The grant for Portage Northern was one of just 50 awarded to schools nationwide to help schools improve inclusivity of LGBTQ+ students.

The idea was initially met with great resistance among some in her school community.  In response, she helped shift the language of her grant proposal to offer gender-affirming clothing and supplies as part of a larger resource that her building now calls the “Free Store.”

“The students and I worked to transform the original idea into something even more powerful,” she explained. “We now have a Free Store for the entire community.”

Sarah Nott, a teacher at Portage Northern High School who nominated Paynich for the award, said she regularly sends students to the free store who are in need of clothing and hygiene products and otherwise might fall through the cracks.

“With this adjustment in the direction of her grant, she was able to retain funding for our GSA to complete this amazing project, and her work for inclusivity ended up benefiting not just one demographic but several,” Nott said.