With a 6-1 vote, the county school board adopted final revisions to a controversial sex-education curriculum on Tuesday, even as the embattled lesson plans are being contested at the state level. And for the first time in county classrooms, teachers will be allowed to answer students’ questions about homosexuality.
Permitting teachers to answer the questions was a change Superintendent Jerry D. Weast forwarded to the board on Monday.
Teachers who taught the pilot curriculum in three middle and three high schools this spring expressed concern that they could not answer some students’ questions because of the sensitivity of the topic.
‘‘If students ask, ‘Is homosexuality an illness?’ say, ‘No. The American Psychiatric Association does not include homosexuality in its listing of psychiatric or mental disorders,” Weast wrote in a June 11 memo. ‘‘We believe this change, reviewed by legal counsel and consistent with one of the [advisory committee’s] recommendations, provides the appropriate guidance to teachers should they receive this question from students during the lessons.”
With Tuesday’s vote, the curriculum — with a seven-minute video on condom usage and two 45-minute lessons on sexual orientation for eighth- and 10th-graders — is slated to be taught in all middle and high schools next year.
The sex-education curriculum has long been contentious, and Tuesday’s action was no exception.
Revisions passed in 2004 included a discussion of homosexuality and a video on condom use. Citizens for a Responsible Curriculum and Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays sued to stop the curriculum in U.S. District Court in Greenbelt, saying it was unconstitutional.
In May 2005, a federal judge ruled that teacher resource materials were objectionable because they unfairly singled out specific religious denominations for their condemnation of homosexuality.
As part of settlement with critics, the board agreed to scrap the curriculum and restarted the process of revising the lessons. The critics were given seats on the reconstituted advisory commission that recommended the curriculum approved Tuesday.
School board members were briefed two weeks ago on the results of this year’s field test. Of the 905 students eligible for the classes, 84 opted out of the lessons, according to the field test results.
‘‘I have no understanding of what changed from when I was briefed on this issue and what changed when the memorandum came out,” said board member Stephen N. Abrams (Dist. 2) of Rockville, who cast the lone dissenting vote on Tuesday.
Abrams said he was ‘‘extremely offended” that the statement about homosexuality was added after he was briefed on the field test. ‘‘There is no new science and no new facts. I don’t believe good decisions are made hastily.”
The advisory committee, with 10 of its 15 members present, was briefed last week on the results of the pilot, complete with feedback from teachers and students.
While many eighth-graders said the classes were productive overall, others complained that the lesson plans were not informative enough and allowed too little time for discussion. As for the overhauled condom video for 10th-graders — with a man’s and a woman’s voices narrating proper condom usage — several high school sophomores thought it was clear-cut, but only mildly interesting.
Some eighth-grade teachers complained that the lesson plans went too quickly and had too many worksheets for students.
Some saw the statement about homosexuality as a major victory.
‘‘Including this statement for teachers to respond to questions from students will go a long way to helping MCPS students understand that sexual orientation is something each of us has, but ... not all of us are the same,” said Christine Grewell, a member of TeachTheFacts.org, a parents group that supports sex education in county schools.
Not everyone is happy with the revisions. On Tuesday, CRC and PFOX rallied outside school board headquarters in Rockville to voice their disapproval of the statement on homosexuality.
‘‘It is controversial because it fails to tell the students that homosexuality is a highly controversial issue in our society,” Peter Sprigg, who represents PFOX on the advisory panel, told the board on Tuesday. ‘‘It is divisive because it fails to tell the students that the American people are sharply divided in their views as to whether homosexual acts should be accepted or discouraged.”
In February, PFOX, CRC and the Family Leader Network asked the Maryland State Department of Education to stop the curriculum before it was tested. State schools Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick denied the groups’ request for a stay and allowed the pilot to move forward.
The state school board, which has the final say on the curriculum, is expected to make its decision next month.
‘‘It simply makes no sense for the board to rush into final approval of the systemwide implementation of a curriculum that may be struck down by legal action as early as next month,” Sprigg added.
If the state board does not throw out the curriculum, the activists would have to ‘‘weigh our options,” said CRC President John R. Garza, a Rockville attorney who also represents the three groups. Garza said earlier that critics would sue the school system if the curriculum is adopted.
He also said the school board is ‘‘ignoring” the state board’s timeline.
Last week, Montgomery board member Patricia B. O’Neill (Dist. 3) of Bethesda disagreed.
‘‘That is a falsehood,” she said of Garza’s accusation. ‘‘We were not in a big hurry. This was the absolute scheduled time we were to vote on this.”
School board members were unmoved by the lawsuit threats. They approved the curriculum in January pending the results of the field tests.
Board President Nancy Navarro (Dist. 5) of Silver Spring said she was ‘‘very concerned” about the time lost discussing the curriculum.
‘‘I was concerned about approving any additions, but ... when you’re running a complex school system such as ours, things are not always static,” she said. ‘‘Given this development, I am very pleased to support what is before us. This is a step in the right direction.”
O’Neill, along with board member Sharon W. Cox (At-large) of Germantown, has spent five years tweaking the sex-ed curriculum. She supported the statement on homosexuality.
‘‘I believe this is a very fine curriculum,” O’Neill said. ‘‘We’re here to present what’s appropriate in education for children. There are some people who would like us not to touch this. I have looked forward to the day when we could unveil this curriculum countywide.”
