Montgomery County Public Schools “misled” parents and a federal court about the controversial introduction of LGBTQ-related reading materials for grades as young as pre-kindergarten, according to a Muslim civil rights group.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations said documents obtained from the school system via open records requests call into question the district’s claim that a program to allow families to opt students out of LGBTQ-related instruction would be too disruptive for county schools.
According to CAIR, that rationale, which school district officials cited in two July court filings, went unmentioned in earlier meetings with Muslim community 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 same day filed a declaration supporting the district in which she said, “In March 2023, MCPS met with a small group of principals.
Through these conversations, MCPS became aware that individual principals and teachers could not accommodate the growing number of opt out requests without causing significant disruptions to the classroom environment and undermining MCPS’s educational mission.”
But Hisham M. Garti, outreach director of the Montgomery County Muslim Council, said MCPS officials who met with him and CAIR Maryland director Zainab Chaudry on May 1 only said “a few parents of the LGBTQ community complained” that students leaving the classes had “offended” some classmates and that some students “had their feelings hurt,” according to 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 filing, CAIR government affairs director Robert S. McCaw said a review of 130 pages of MCPS documents obtained under an open records request showed “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 asked MCPS to back up the disruption claim, the district could supply “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,” said Edward Ahmed Mitchell, CAIR’s deputy executive director, during a community webinar aired on social media Tuesday evening.
Testimony and statements about the “opt-out” provision and its removal are central to a federal lawsuit filed earlier this year against the Montgomery County Board of Education on behalf of Muslim and Christian parents seeking the right to remove their children from class when the LGBTQ materials were discussed. The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a public interest law firm, is representing the parents in this case.
Mr. Mitchell said he hoped a decision would be handed down before school begins in Montgomery County next week.
CAIR also claimed that officials encouraged teachers to “disrupt the either/or thinking” of pupils who voice traditional values in class.
Mr. Mitchell said an MCPS “Sample Student Call-Ins” document 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 said during the Tuesday evening webinar. MCPS officials “are expressing one intent publicly and expressing a very different intent behind the scenes,” he said.
CAIR said teacher discussion guides provided under an open records request refute MCPS claims English teachers were not teaching students about sexuality. The district had said it only featured the books to feature “a greater diversity of characters” and not for sex education purposes, the group claimed.
In addition, Mr. Ahmed said Tuesday evening, the principal’s association document said “What the school is telling the families and the public is not what their teachers are being told.”
He said 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 did not respond to a request for comment.
Communications director Christopher Cram has previously told The Washington Times the district cannot comment about pending litigation.
• Mark A. Kellner can be reached at mkellner@washingtontimes.com.
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