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.

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.

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.

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.

Anonymous wrote:

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.

So you didn't bother to engage with the columnist's own decision to opt his kid out of a classroom viewing of "It's A Beautiful Life"?

The point of the piece and this discussion thread is not that you have to agree with that particular family's decision to opt out on that specific, it's the idea of the tension between what parents think is best and what the education system believes is best and how systems and communities should respond when there's disagreement between the two.

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.

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.