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Sex ed committee almost full

Ineligible nominee rejected by board

Wednesday, Oct. 26, 2005

The county school board has named 14 of 15 members to an advisory committee that will review sex education lessons, a move that has one group considering legal action.

The board did not name a member to fill a seat reserved for Citizens for a Responsible Curriculum.

‘‘That seat on the committee will remain vacant until CRC submits a qualified nominee,” board President Patricia B. O’Neill said in a prepared statement released at Monday night’s meeting in Rockville.

CRC’s board of directors plans to meet Thursday to consider whether to go back to court over an agreement that settled a federal lawsuit against the school board by CRC and Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays, said John R. Garza, a Rockville attorney who is CRC’s vice president.

The groups opposed revisions to the eighth- and 10th-grade health curriculum that included adding a discussion of sexual orientation and a video demonstrating condom use.

The settlement agreement, signed in June, guaranteed that CRC and PFOX would each have a member on the 15-member panel.

More than 180 people applied for a spot on the panel.

CRC nominated Henrietta Brown, who was a dissenting voice on a 27-member advisory panel that recommended the controversial lessons.

But naming Brown would go against a board resolution that members of the new panel must not have served on the previous panel.

The board dissolved the earlier panel in May following a federal court order blocking the lessons.

Garza said there was ‘‘a very good chance” that the group would ask a county Circuit Court judge or U.S. District Court Judge Alexander Williams Jr. to enforce the agreement as CRC sees it. In May, Williams issued the order stopping the revised curriculum from being taught.

‘‘It may be that [CRC leaders] decide to capitulate and that it’s not worth fighting with the board,” Garza said. ‘‘Because there are plenty of other members of CRC who are qualified to serve.”

Garza said the group wants to sit down with the school board to resolve their differences. More litigation ‘‘will hurt our chances of ever getting to meet with them,” he said.

Under the settlement, the school system retained the right to develop curriculum that includes a discussion of sexual orientation, but also agreed to pay $36,000 in legal fees to the two groups.

Part of the agreement says that the board will appoint CRC and PFOX representatives ‘‘provided such representatives are Montgomery County residents and are otherwise qualified and able to serve on the committee.”

The agreement also says that it ‘‘supersedes any prior or contemporaneous agreement, understanding or undertaking, whether written or oral, by or between parties regarding these matters.”

Also Monday, Superintendent Jerry D. Weast, in a memo to the board, said school administrators and four pediatricians associated with the Children’s National Medical Center in Washington are working to develop new curriculum.

Weast expects to bring recommendations to the board in April. The new curriculum would be piloted in eighth- and 10th-grade health classes in fall 2006, he said.

Appointed Monday night to the advisory panel are six members representing organizations:

*Peter Sprigg of PFOX.

*Tracy Fox of the county council of PTAs.

*Wootton High senior Eric Kay of the county association of student councils.

*James Kennedy of TeachtheFacts.org.

*Richelle Meer of NARAL Pro-Choice Maryland.

*Emily Wurtz of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays.

The board also appointed eight others, including one student:

*Carol Plotsky, who will serve as chairwoman.

*Subash Duggirala.

*Matthew Murguia.

*Victor Olano.

*Maria Peña-Faustino.

*Esther Pinder.

*Elinor Walker.

*Richard Montgomery High senior Esther Lei.