Grasmick gives Montgomery’s sex-ed lessons the go-ahead for a pilot test
Maryland state schools Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick is allowing Montgomery County’s controversial sex-education curriculum to continue to be field-tested this school year.
On Wednesday, Grasmick denied a stay to three groups that asked her to halt the test of two 45-minute lessons in the eighth- and 10-th grades on condom use and sexual orientation, much to the dismay of parent activists who asked the state school board to stop the lesson plans.
The lessons are now being taught at Argyle Middle School in Silver Spring. They started on Tuesday. The curriculum will be piloted at three middle schools and three high schools in the spring.
The state school board is still considering the appeal, filed in February by the Citizens for a Responsible Curriculum, Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays and Family Leader Network. The groups claim the county school board released factually inaccurate information and did not put out material for public review before approving the curriculum.
‘‘I believe it is in the public interest to field-test these lessons because they focus, in part, on the significant problems of bullying and harassment,” Grasmick wrote in a five-page memo explaining her denial of the stay. ‘‘I have concluded that, because participation in these classes is entirely voluntary, the harm to those students that the appellants want to protect is virtually non-existent.”
In their appeal, the groups say the lesson plans violate students’ constitutional rights, including freedom of speech and the right to freely exercise religion.
‘‘She seems to have given an honest assessment,” CRC President John R. Garza said Wednesday afternoon of Grasmick’s decision. ‘‘We haven’t lost, we just lost the stay position of this procedure.”
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