The Story Behind the Story Behind the Story

Now that the smoke has cleared somewhat following Tuesday's school board meeting, the Washington Post has some insights into what happened in the last few days before the school board's vote. In the meeting Steve Abrams accused Jerry Weast -- or somebody, anybody -- of putting pressure on the board to include the AMA, AAP, and APA materials. In the hallway afterwards, it was my impression that Abrams was saying that the citizens advisory committee had applied the pressure.

Well, I'm on that committee and I'll tell you what we did. When MCPS presented us with the results of the pilot testing, the committee members agreed that the major problems that were identified -- specifically, teachers reading a script and no chance to answer questions -- could be solved by doing something we had proposed a long time ago, which was to include some literature from the leading medical and mental health organizations. A committee member -- Matthew Murguia -- moved that we recommend inclusion of the materials, and we voted. CRC and PFOX of course voted against it, the rest of us voted for it.

That's all. The committee voted on a motion.

It did not seem that the MCPS staff who were present at the meeting were that excited by the idea, you might say, I'm sure they were hoping things would go peaceably and smoothly; but they wrote it up and presented it to the Superintendent and he sent it to the school board. Woo, big pressure. I'm almost falling asleep talking about it here.

Here's The Post this morning:

The addition of one bit of guidance for teachers to the new sex education lessons for Montgomery County public schools was a small 11th-hour victory for members of a citizens advisory committee who had felt shut out of the educational process they were empaneled to advise.

Superintendent Jerry D. Weast on Monday told school board members that his staff would add a brief passage to the new sex education lessons that also instruct teachers on how to answer a specific question if asked by a student: "Is homosexuality an illness?" The answer: It is not, according to the American Psychiatric Association.

Board members Tuesday approved the lessons, with that addition, effectively expanding the two 45-minute lessons from a six-school pilot program to full implementation in eighth- and 10th-grade health classes this fall.

The last-minute tweak was a concession to the advisory committee, and it might have helped Weast and his staff keep control of the curriculum.

Members of the committee, a group representing parents, educators and a variety of other stakeholders, lobbied Weast and board members intensely late last week to make additions to the lessons, which they said offered students too little information to counter misconceptions about homosexuality and homosexuals, such as whether sexual orientation is a choice and whether homosexuals can lead happy lives. Late Gain For Sex Ed Committee

I know there was a last-minute flurry of emails and phone calls, and these were provoked, I think, by the committee's recommendation. I think a lot of people realized this was our one and only chance, and realized that the curriculum was too compromised. The committee didn't really lobby people ourselves, as far as I know, we just set the wheels in motion.

It is an interesting observation, that the last-minute tweak let Weast's staff "keep control of the curriculum."

Look, before the citizens committee meeting I talked with some people about exactly what compromises would and would not be acceptable. For instance, the ideal thing would be: teachers have the three articles for reference so they can answer questions and students are given a handout with the five bullet points. But -- it would've been OK if teachers had the bullet points for answering questions and gave them to students. We decided we would be happy if they just made a handout with the bullet points for students: no discussion, no articles.

We would have been happy with just about anything.

In the committee meeting, it came out that the members wanted to re-state the recommendation we had made earlier. It was moved, seconded, voted, and that was that: just send the Superintendent the same thing we sent him before. We wanted to make sure he understood that we considered that a serious recommendation.

When I first heard what Weast had proposed, my first response was: this is thinner than any compromise we had even considered. He really offered almost nothing: teachers would have one of the bullet points to use, and only if a student asked one specific question.

But guess what -- we were elated. He was conceding the very least imaginable, but at least it was the most important bullet point. So in a sense it was a very smart move for him, because he got to march at the front of the parade instead of being trampled, and the cost for him was negligible.

Committee members said the lessons, which define various terms related to sexual orientation and teach the virtue of tolerance, offered little information to answer such basic student questions as whether homosexuality is normal and healthy. The lessons are tightly scripted, and teachers are told to direct student questions to a "trusted adult" if they stray from the material in the lessons.

"I can't explain it, and I don't understand it, and I wish I did, why they're not putting this information in the curriculum," said Richelle Meer, a member of the citizens committee who has a daughter at Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring. "We feel that these are things that kids are talking about even before eighth grade."

Sadly, even this innocuous curriculum was a fight every step of the way, with the CRC and PFOX whining and arguing over every little obvious point. You had a handful of radicals trying to disrupt this thing, and though they had no chance of actually succeeding, they did make it twice as hard for everybody who was trying to concentrate on the actual task at hand.

I share Richelle's inability to comprehend how this could happen, especially in a county like ours.

School board members faced similar lobbying in January, when the classroom materials came up for initial approval as a pilot program. After first pushing for the addition of a raft of statements more supportive to gay, lesbian and transgender students, committee members retreated to requesting the addition of a single sentence, instructing that mainstream medical and mental health organizations have concluded that homosexuality is not a disease or a mental illness.

The suggestion divided board members, who split 4 to 4 on a motion by board member Patricia O'Neill (Bethesda-Chevy Chase) to instruct teachers to provide the statement upon a student's request. The motion died.

O'Neill said this week she "felt it was not sufficient to say, 'If a student asks the question, send them to a trusted adult.' . . . That's not an answer. That's punting."

Yes, that's punting. Think about real teenagers in a real classroom, with real lives that they are trying to understand. When they have questions about sexuality, it's important to them, this is the stuff they're thinking about all day long. They need answers. Good answers. What are they going to think when the school is afraid to answer their simple questions?

In advance of this week's meeting, the advisory committee again urged Weast and board members to augment the lessons with several statements: That fleeting same-sex attraction does not equate to homosexuality, that homosexuality is neither a disease nor a mental illness, that it is not a choice, that homosexuals can live happy lives and be successful parents and that children raised by same-sex couples do "just as well" as those who are not.

O'Neill said she planned, at the least, to renew her motion of January. But O'Neill received word late Friday that Weast planned to add that language to the lessons himself. Members of the citizens advisory committee said they were pleased with the slight addition to the lessons, although they would have preferred that all of their recommendations be adopted.

That's good to know she was planning to do that. Her remarks during the meeting were inspirational and right on-target.

David Fishback, the former chairman of the committee, termed it "a very, very important step," although he said the provision of a specific answer to a specific question from a curious student would do no good for "the child who is afraid to ask."

This issue is very near to David for personal reasons, as he revealed in his public comments to the board on Tuesday morning. More than any one person, David kept this topic alive. He made sure everyone within hearing distance knew why the medical material should be included, knew all the arguments for including them and all the holes in the arguments against it. You can't say he applied "pressure" to anyone, because he is not in any position of power to do that, but he kept this on the front burner.

Now, these last couple of lines are interesting.

Opponents of the sex education lessons, who generally said that homosexuality should not be taught as a topic in sex education, said they had no objection to the added language.

"We have never claimed homosexuality to be a mental illness," said Michelle Turner, spokeswoman of Citizens for a Responsible Curriculum, the lead opposition group.

The material is not being presented in the classroom to counter claims by the CRC, it's there to teach students the facts about sexual orientation. A kid in a classroom doesn't know if it's a mental illness or not, he might feel like there's something wrong with him, and it's a good idea to tell him that's not it.

But now I'm wondering, since CRC and PFOX both voted against including these materials ... what part of it didn't they like?