From The Gazette

Group Wants Homosexuality, Condoms Out Of Curriculum

by Sean R. Sedam

December 1, 2004

A small but passionate group of parents and community members is leading a campaign to do away with plans to discuss homosexuality and demonstrate condom use in school health classes -- and some have called for doing away with the county school board that approved the program last month.

Only the County Council may remove members of the county school board from office, but that has not stopped people in Montgomery County and beyond from flocking to the Web site www.recallmontgomeryschoolboard.com to voice their displeasure with the board's Nov. 9 vote.

The board voted 6-0 to include an eight-minute video that features a young woman discussing how condoms can reduce the risk of contracting sexually transmitted diseases or becoming pregnant. She also demonstrates the proper way to put on a condom, using a cucumber.

The school system piloted the video, which is approved only for 10th-graders, at three high schools in the spring: James Hubert Blake and Montgomery Blair in Silver Spring, and Northwest in Germantown.

Discussion of "sexual variations," which will be piloted in eighth- and 10th-grade classes at three middle and three high schools in the spring, is also generating controversy. Maryland schools have been allowed to discuss homosexuality as part of the health curriculum since 1970, but so far county schools have allowed teachers only to address specific questions from students, not bring the topic up for discussion.

Now, some parents and other community members are calling on the board to stop those discussions before they begin.

Michelle Turner, who has four children in the Einstein cluster and was president of the Einstein High School PTA last year, is planning a meeting Saturday to keep the issue before the school board. The meeting place had not been set Tuesday, but Turner said people should go to the "recall" Web site to find out more details later in the week.

Turner, who was president of the county council of PTAs in 2001-2002, is a member of the Citizens' Advisory Committee for Family Life and Human Development, which recommends material for approval by the school board. She opposed the new health curriculum.

"I do not wish to recall the school board," Turner said. "I know a number of them, and they are in a very difficult position. ... I think they have to be more attuned to the residents of the county."

Students will not participate in the controversial parts of the health courses unless their parents sign them up, said Russell Henke, the school system's health educator coordinator.

Only about 2 percent of eighth-graders and 1 percent of 10th-graders opt out of the lessons, Henke said.

"We're still looking at a publicly funded school system," Turner said. "Religious or not, this is not what the school system is designed to do. This is not the department of social services. If they identify a child in need, let them talk to the school nurse, let them talk to a guidance counselor, call the parents in, let them talk to the child or teach parents how to talk to the child."

Stacie Giles, whose daughter attends Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda, agreed.

"Sex has a lot of moral, ethical, principle concerns, and I think parents should be involved in teaching their children these sorts of things," she said.

The condom video may be a done deal, but the community has an opportunity to head off the discussion of homosexuality before it starts, Giles said.

"I think that MCPS, if it has any sense at all, would stop this experiment before it's started, because it's generated such an uproar in the community, and go back and solicit a lot more parental input and involvement," Giles said.

The curriculum has already been before the board three times and dates back to 2002, when the advisory committee first recommended including it, said Board Vice President Patricia B. O'Neill (Dist. 3) of Bethesda.

O'Neill said she considered all viewpoints before voting for the new curriculum, just as she has in other controversial votes that she has made during her six years on the board.

"In Montgomery County, there are 52 positions on every issue and everyone thinks they're right," she said. "But it can't be he who triggers the most e-mails or letters."

Ellen Castellano of Montgomery Village was among about 75 parents at a meeting last week at Damascus High School. The meeting -- originally scheduled to discuss this year's health curriculum -- turned into a discussion of the board's decision.

Castellano said that the current curriculum should not be thrown out, but that discussion of homosexuality is a "quantum leap change."

The new curriculum does not simply discuss homosexuality, she said, "It appears that they're pushing it."

Reaction to the new curriculum has spilled onto local airwaves. WMAL radio host Chris Core said he has spent about four hours taking calls and discussing the controversy on his radio show over the past two weeks and could have spent more time on the issue.

The issue makes for good radio "because it's really controversial and because it involves kids and it involves a school board being activists," he said.

A listener set up the "recall" Web site, which is linked to Core's WMAL site, after listening to the show, Core said.

"One guy called up and said, 'Chris, I've been listening to the program and it made me so angry that I've registered the domain name,'" Core said. "I told people this is a good idea. This is a place to get it off your chest."

Stephen N. Abrams of Rockville, who will be sworn in tonight as the board member for District 2, went on Core's show to discuss the controversy.

In an interview Tuesday, Abrams said schools must walk a "fine line" of being "informational without being advocates" when discussing alternative lifestyles.

"I'm not certain that standard was complied with in the development of the curriculum," he said.

Abrams said he plans to observe how the pilot program is used in classrooms this spring -- and, when a vote to include it as a permanent part of the curriculum comes up, possibly next summer, raise issues that "should've been raised earlier."