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LOU CHIBBARO JR
Friday, August 03, 2007
A sex education proposal for the District of Columbia’s public schools that calls for teaching sixth and eighth grade students about romantic and sexual feelings between people of the same gender received almost no feedback during a 30-day public comment period that ended this week.
City schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee said the proposed new standards, issued July 2 and intended for developing a future sex education and health curriculum, would undergo further review “by experts across the country to make sure the standards are right.”
Rhee and Mayor Adrian Fenty, when asked about the proposed standards at a news conference Monday, gave no indication that they objected to the proposals or would call for removing their gay-related components.
“I could not find any comments at all on the proposed standards,” said John Stokes, a spokesperson for the office of D.C. schools Superintendent Deborah Gist, who oversees the approval process for teaching standards. Gist reports to Rhee, who makes the final decision on school curricula, which are developed in a separate process.
Kindra Catrell, an assistant to the D.C. State Board of Education, a mostly advisory body, said “a few” comments on the proposed standards appear to have arrived by postal mail in the past few days.
“Not a lot have come in,” she said.
Catrell said the State Board, which is assigned to review public comments, was considering extending the public comment period until the board scheduled a vote on the standards.
A similar sex education proposal in Montgomery County, Md., that included gay-related subjects became embroiled in controversy for more than a year after conservative activists objected to the curriculum.
Last month, Montgomery County school officials gave final approval to the proposed sex education curriculum, which includes, among other things, a go-ahead for teachers to tell students who ask that homosexuality is not a psychiatric disorder or mental illness.
Opponents said they would likely go to court to challenge the curriculum.
Regina Griggs, an official with the D.C. area group Parents & Friends of Ex-Gays & Gays, spoke out against the Montgomery County sex education curriculum with concerns that the notion that sexual orientation can be changed be included in the lessons.
When contacted this week, Griggs said she had not seen the proposed standards for D.C. schools. She said she would likely comment on the proposal after she reviews it.
John Garza, an official with Citizens for a Responsible Curriculum, a Maryland group that strongly opposed the Montgomery County sex education curriculum, did not return a call this week seeking comment on the D.C. proposal.
“I don’t think that kind of opposition will happen here,” said Iris Toyer, president of Parents United, a school watchdog group that has played a key role in monitoring the D.C. public school system.
“It’s a different community,” she said, referring to D.C.’s school activist community and to advocacy groups in Montgomery County.
Toyer said Parents United supports the proposed D.C. standards, including the components addressing gay issues. She said her group has reviewed the standards and plans to submit comments seeking some additions, including the teaching of more options related to contraception and preventing unplanned pregnancies.
“We were pleased that they introduce sexual orientation in the sixth grade,” Toyer said.
Stokes, the D.C. schools spokesperson, said legislation approved by D.C. Council earlier this year that transferred authority to run the schools from an elected board of education to the mayor gives the new State Board of Education authority to approve teaching standards. He said the schools chancellor, who is appointed by the mayor, now has full authority to approve school curricula.
The D.C. Healthy Youth Coalition, which includes at least four gay health or youth groups, has expressed support for the proposed standards in an internal memo. The coalition includes the Sexual Minority Youth Assistance League, Metro Teen AIDS, the D.C. Chapter of Parents & Friends of Lesbians and Gays and Whitman-Walker Clinic.
The proposed standards for teaching sex education and health are outlined in a 43-page draft document called Health Learning Standards.
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