Panel will advise board on sex ed curriculum Aug. 2, 2005
Sean R. Sedam
Staff Writer
Two groups that sued the Montgomery County school board over lessons discussing homosexuality and the county's student council will have representatives serve on a panel that will advise the board on its sex education curriculum.
The 15-member committee will include four other representatives from county organizations. The remaining eight seats are reserved for individual county residents, one of whom will be a student in a county public high school.
The board will accept applications for the panel until Sept. 9.
That will give the county's association of student councils time to nominate their representative, board President Patricia B. O'Neill (Dist. 3) of Bethesda said at the board's meeting Wednesday night in Rockville.
The board will appoint the new committee members at its Oct. 11 meeting.
In June, the board settled a federal lawsuit over revisions to the eighth- and 10th- grade sex education curriculum. The revisions included a video demonstrating condom use that was shown in county high schools this spring and a pilot program on sexual orientation that a federal judge blocked schools from teaching this spring.
The settlement guaranteed the groups that brought the suit, a parents group known as Citizens for a Responsible Curriculum and a group called Parents and Friends of Ex- Gays and Gays, one member each on the new panel.
Following the judge's ruling, the board voted to suspend the lessons on sexual orientation and the condom video until they could be reconsidered.
The board also voted in May to disband a 27-member advisory committee that had recommended the pilot lesson and video and decided that the new panel would not include anyone who served on the previous committee.
Additionally, the board backed a decision by Superintendent Jerry D. Weast to have outside consultants and school administrators develop revisions to the pilot program and the video.
Maryland law requires school boards to appoint an advisory panel to review instructional materials used in the sex education units of health courses.
Two members of the former panel served on a committee of school administrators and health teachers that wrote the now-scrapped lessons. The advisory panel's members spent more than two years discussing materials to be included in those lessons.
The new panel will have a much more limited role.
"They are just a consultant advisory committee," O'Neill said. "It is the professional educators that will write the curriculum."
To apply |
For the Citizens Advisory Committee on Family Life and Human Development, go to www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/boe or contact Becky Gibson at 301-279- 3301 or Becky_Gibson@fc.mcps.k12.md.us.Adult committee members will serve two-year terms. Students will serve one-year terms. |
Asked if he was disappointed that the board decided not to allow any members of the disbanded panel to serve on the new committee, David Fishback, who chaired the disbanded panel, took a long time before answering.
"I understand the board's reasons for the decision," said Fishback, who helped write the curriculum. "That will mean that a number of very good people that could contribute a lot will not be able to serve on the committee this go-round. But I am confident that in a county of roughly 1 million people, the board will be able to find 13 excellent citizens to fill the remaining 13 slots. No one is indispensable."
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