Montgomery County Public Schools “misled” dad and mom and a federal court docket in regards to the controversial introduction of LGBTQ-related studying supplies for grades as younger as pre-kindergarten, in accordance with a Muslim civil rights group.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations mentioned paperwork obtained from the college system through open data requests name into query the district’s declare {that a} program to permit households to choose college students out of LGBTQ-related instruction can be too disruptive for county colleges.
According to CAIR, that rationale, which faculty district officers cited in two July court docket filings, went unmentioned in earlier conferences with Muslim group representatives.
In a July 12 “Memorandum of Law” filed by the district, MCPS attorneys claimed that “individual schools could not accommodate the growing number of [opt-out] requests without causing significant disruptions to the classroom environment and undermining MCPS’s educational mission.”
Associate Superintendant Niki T. Hazel that very same day filed a declaration supporting the district during which she mentioned, “In March 2023, MCPS met with a small group of principals.
Through these conversations, MCPS grew to become conscious that particular person principals and lecturers couldn’t accommodate the rising variety of choose out requests with out inflicting important disruptions to the classroom surroundings and undermining MCPS’s instructional mission.”
But Hisham M. Garti, outreach director of the Montgomery County Muslim Council, mentioned MCPS officers who met with him and CAIR Maryland director Zainab Chaudry on May 1 solely mentioned “a few parents of the LGBTQ community complained” that college students leaving the lessons had “offended” some classmates and that some college students “had their feelings hurt,” in accordance with an affidavit filed July 26,
“At no point did [MCPS chief academic officer] Dr. [Peggy A.] Pugh or any other MCPS official claim that the number of students requesting opt-outs had become too burdensome or disrupted the functioning of their schools.”
In a separate submitting, CAIR authorities affairs director Robert S. McCaw mentioned a evaluate of 130 pages of MCPS paperwork obtained below an open data request confirmed “no mention of any concern that the number of parental requests for opt-outs were becoming too numerous or burdensome for MCPS.”
And when a Montgomery County-based media outlet requested MCPS to again up the disruption declare, the district may provide “not a single email, not a single chart, not a single number. Nothing at all, about the issue of too many kids opting out … being the reason the opt-out was canceled,” mentioned Edward Ahmed Mitchell, CAIR’s deputy govt director, throughout a group webinar aired on social media Tuesday night.
Testimony and statements in regards to the “opt-out” provision and its removing are central to a federal lawsuit filed earlier this 12 months in opposition to the Montgomery County Board of Education on behalf of Muslim and Christian dad and mom searching for the fitting to take away their youngsters from class when the LGBTQ supplies had been mentioned. The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a public curiosity regulation agency, is representing the dad and mom on this case.
Mr. Mitchell mentioned he hoped a call can be handed down earlier than faculty begins in Montgomery County subsequent week.
CAIR additionally claimed that officers inspired lecturers to “disrupt the either/or thinking” of pupils who voice conventional values in school.
Mr. Mitchell mentioned an MCPS “Sample Student Call-Ins” doc obtained by the group “advises teachers to tell students who express a traditional view about relationships that their comment is ‘hurtful’ and that students shouldn’t use … ‘negative words.’”
“The documents we found clearly indicate that the school system is saying one thing in public and saying something quite differently behind the scenes,” Mr. Mitchell mentioned throughout the Tuesday night webinar. MCPS officers “are expressing one intent publicly and expressing a very different intent behind the scenes,” he mentioned.
CAIR mentioned instructor dialogue guides supplied below an open data request refute MCPS claims English lecturers weren’t educating college students about sexuality. The district had mentioned it solely featured the books to characteristic “a greater diversity of characters” and never for intercourse schooling functions, the group claimed.
In addition, Mr. Ahmed mentioned Tuesday night, the principal’s affiliation doc mentioned “What the school is telling the families and the public is not what their teachers are being told.”
He mentioned MCPS “teachers are being told to explicitly teach concepts related to family life and relationships and gender and sex that would normally arise in a sex ed course.”
A Montgomery County Public Schools spokesman didn’t reply to a request for remark.
Communications director Christopher Cram has beforehand instructed The Washington Times the district can not remark about pending litigation.
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