WaPo Columnist: Why Montgomery County should listen to its parents

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The school can't explain how they're going to do it, because the plan will differ whether it's 1 child in 4th grade who opts out of the book/movie/project, or 15, or 50. If it's 1, they'll go sit in the office and read their own book in the corner. If it's 15, they'll make a separate "book club" for those 15 to read something else. If it's 50, they'll swap kids around between classrooms so some classes read book x and others read book y.

The idea that the school should tell you today what is going to happen to an unknown number of kids for an unknown book at an unknown point in the year is ridiculous.

Schools/teachers are already overworked, and now parents want to make them do twice the lesson planning. Send your kid to religious school, keep them home, or tell them, "You might hear X but mommy and daddy don't agree with that. We believe Y" and then trust that your parenting skills and relationships are strong enough that your kid will make it through a lesson you don't love.

I dunno, that framework you described of different thresholds and different solutions based on those thresholds sounds like a plan that can and should be communicated by MCPS to me.

DP. Yes, it should, when there's enough of a plan to share at a BOE meeting, for example. I don't know why the columnist expected MCPS staff to share something that's still being developed with them before it's been presented to the board.

NP. We are less than a month from the start of the school year. They need to have a clear plan in place before then. They should already have presented before the BOE to get feedback and ensure the elected officials are on board with the plan. As usual, they are dragging their feet. I fully expect more litigation because of it.

..because MCPS isn't moving fast enough? a lawsuit? I mean, I guess the religious extremists may come in and fund that too.

[Anonymous]

this columnist is deliberately lying. for example:

"The Persaks quickly learned that books similar to “My Maddy” were being assigned in their children’s classrooms to teach about human sexuality."

this is plainly false.

[Anonymous]

MCPS: Home of religious extremists. It's embarrassing.

[Anonymous]

I just read it, it's a very wishy-washy article.

Personally, with kids in secondary school, I was not aware that elementary schools were making kids read that stuff. I understand why some families might not want their kids exposed to that so early, but if my kids had been in elementary school and read those things, I wouldn't mind very much.

My larger bone of contention with MCPS is that the English curriculum is TERRIBLE. AWFUL. Kids are reading more excerpts, fewer full-length novels, and the literary canon on which all western cultural references is based has all but disappeared except in high school, mostly at the AP level. In order to appreciate contemporary and minority authors, the canon needs to be taught. It's how my literature teachers exposed racism, misogyny, theocracy and classism. You can't appreciate other works without delving into the canon.

LBGTQ+ works are valuable additions to English class, but the problem is that MCPS, in a bid to look progressive, spends way too much time on modern works and not enough time on the classics. My 9th grader at BCC spent a portion of the school year on a graphic novel, that had been assigned because of its LGBTQ+ theme. We like graphic novels in the house, but they do not have their place in a 9th grade English curriculum, where students should be trained to read longer and more complex works, with extended vocabulary, complex grammar and all the swells and eddies of language.

English writing is also greatly lacking. My oldest, who earned As in AP Lang and AP Lit, struggled a bit in college with his essay writing. MCPS does not teach it to a high enough standard. They need to start earlier, instead of distributing those silly worksheets, and practice more.

MCPS is better than all the area privates at STEM, but it's worse than some of the better privates in English classics and writing.

[Anonymous]

Your kids are in high school, MCPS now uses CKLA for ELA which includes full novels starting in third and more books in middle school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The school can't explain how they're going to do it, because the plan will differ whether it's 1 child in 4th grade who opts out of the book/movie/project, or 15, or 50. If it's 1, they'll go sit in the office and read their own book in the corner. If it's 15, they'll make a separate "book club" for those 15 to read something else. If it's 50, they'll swap kids around between classrooms so some classes read book x and others read book y.

The idea that the school should tell you today what is going to happen to an unknown number of kids for an unknown book at an unknown point in the year is ridiculous.

Schools/teachers are already overworked, and now parents want to make them do twice the lesson planning. Send your kid to religious school, keep them home, or tell them, "You might hear X but mommy and daddy don't agree with that. We believe Y" and then trust that your parenting skills and relationships are strong enough that your kid will make it through a lesson you don't love.

I dunno, that framework you described of different thresholds and different solutions based on those thresholds sounds like a plan that can and should be communicated by MCPS to me.

DP. Yes, it should, when there's enough of a plan to share at a BOE meeting, for example. I don't know why the columnist expected MCPS staff to share something that's still being developed with them before it's been presented to the board.

NP. We are less than a month from the start of the school year. They need to have a clear plan in place before then. They should already have presented before the BOE to get feedback and ensure the elected officials are on board with the plan. As usual, they are dragging their feet. I fully expect more litigation because of it.

They'll have something figured out to tell teachers by preservice week.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Marc Fisher, a Washington Post columnist, wrote about the LGBTQ ELA Books opt-out case that the Supreme Court decided on this year: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/07/30/public-schools-sexuality-parents-montgomery-county/

In his column, he rightly pointed out his own hypocrisy after initially judging the parents requesting opt-outs as he decided to opt his kids out of viewing the film "Life Is Beautiful" because he felt it did not accurately depict the Holocaust.

He also reached out to MCPS to get clarity on how it would structure the opt-out options for parents in the upcoming school year and more importantly rebuild the trust it has broken with the opt-out parents, and in true MCPS fashion they stiff-armed him, declined to give substantive specifics and threw word salad at him. I thought his piece struck a thoughtful and accurate balance that MCPS needs to strike and failed to strike, which led to the unfortunate Supreme Court case.

I asked to speak with the MCPS officials deciding how schools will comply with the court’s ruling this fall. That request was denied. The school system’s spokeswoman, Liliana Lopez, offered this statement: “We are working to determine next steps in order to meet the expectations of the Court’s ruling and remain true to our shared values of learning, relationships, respect, excellence and equity.” She said MCPS will update families and staffers before school starts.

Persak hasn’t heard from his daughters’ school. He expects MCPS to, as his lawyer put it, “rebuild trust with parents whom they slandered.” (At least one Montgomery County elected official said pro-opt-out parents were on the same side as “white supremacists and outright bigots.”)

I hope the school system reaches out to parents who want to opt their kids out of lessons on sexuality. And I hope the county stands firm against those who would expand parents’ roles in choosing books and lessons. The last thing the county needs is the kind of cleansing of bookshelves now happening in nearby Virginia, where school boards have removed 223 books from libraries in the past five years.

Educators deserve to decide how best to achieve society’s goals in the classroom. And parents get to push back with their votes and, ultimately, by asserting their authority to raise their children as they see fit. All of this is inherently contradictory — and that’s exactly as it should be. The beauty of the system lies in the tension between opposing ideas.

I doubt MCPS will listen but let's see.

Isn't that getting old, MCPS? Every parent knows what BS you throw at them. Do better. Be adults.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Ugh. The Persaks can send their kids to Catholic school on their own dime if they find the concept of a book being read to their child about a same sex mommy and daddy to be so offensive.

Or, they can opt out of lessons that violate their beliefs. Imagine that.

[Anonymous]

When will MCPS stop being in the news - good or bad?! Let's get to "normal."

[Anonymous]

100% agree

[Anonymous]

There's tons of stupid crap taught in schools, down to kindergarten, that we could easily recognize and would not necessarily have chosen for our kid to be exposed to. (Ex. We had the opportunity to watch how they taught MLK Day, because school was on Zoom.)

We did not and would not attempt to execute an "opt-out," because we send our child to public school.

Our option is to build around what they are exposed to at school, which is what we do.

This man has no legal right to an opt-out from this movie. The SC decision is founded on the premise that the objection to the content is religious, not on the premise that parents can opt out of anything they want.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There's tons of stupid crap taught in schools, down to kindergarten, that we could easily recognize and would not necessarily have chosen for our kid to be exposed to. (Ex. We had the opportunity to watch how they taught MLK Day, because school was on Zoom.)

We did not and would not attempt to execute an "opt-out," because we send our child to public school.

Our option is to build around what they are exposed to at school, which is what we do.

This man has no legal right to an opt-out from this movie. The SC decision is founded on the premise that the objection to the content is religious, not on the premise that parents can opt out of anything they want.

Thank you. It would be great is Moco parents could just all calm down.

[Anonymous]

Parents have rights and should be allowed to opt out. There are extremists on both sides and personal views should be respected. Mcps only focuses on this one group and ignores the rest including those subjected to hate crimes in Mcps. A few times a year, yes but it doesn’t need to be in every class every year.

[Anonymous]

"Educators deserve to decide how best to achieve society’s goals in the classroom."

As if the positions of the NEA are "society's goals." Um, no.

[Anonymous]

Here's MCPS's new process for families "to request alternative assignments if a text conflicts with sincerely held religious views."

https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/news/mcps-news/2025/08/refrigerator-curriculum/