(Download the entire series)

In this series of posts, FACTS will be revealed about how the Montgomery County Public School Board of Education's Citizens Advisory Committee for Family Life and Human Development, or CAC, (by the way, some have dubbed 'CAC' to mean Cucumber And Condom committee, but that's not the point here) majority and leader membership chose to reject some, and not even consider other, factual information representing opposing points of view, in preparing the new sex-ed curriculum.

Does the non-inclusive nature of these actions, lead one to assume a pre-determined agenda was being followed by the Committee and the Board of Education?

One might think so, because the MCPS Superintendent, and Board of Education, did NOTHING to intervene after being informed. And specifically, the Superintendent stated: "I’m sure you realize that I cannot dictate to the committee how they choose to operate or what their decisions should be". Dictate? No! Question? Yes! Investigate? Yes! Personally attend to a matter to make sure all rules were followed? Yes! That's why he is paid $300,000 a year! (Don't believe it?) That's MORE than the President of the United States. Now leading the Montgomery County School System is a big job. But bigger than leading the free world? Especially, when the person in charge says in effect, who am I to question a BOE Committee?
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Many times members of the CAC expressed concerns regarding the recommendations for teacher resources for the new eighth grade sex-ed curriculum that have been approved by the Committee, and now as of November 8, 2004, the BOA.

The principle concerns in this regard were manifest in the materials approved by the Committee, and now the BOA, that contain factually incorrect, incomplete, and biased material which now has the very real potential of putting the children of Montgomery County's health and safety at risk.

These members also expressed concerns that the Committee had compounded this hazard to our children by systematically (and deliberately?) excluding materials from recognized professional sources, including the U Centers for Disease Control, that the Committee majority considered (one can reason) might convey a message counter to the one it sought to promote.

Reluctantly, these CAC members concluded that the Committee was driven more by an intolerance of differing viewpoints, and a desire to promote a specific agenda, rather than a reasonable concern for the presentation of a balanced health and safety children's program in our school system.

And when the MCPS Superintendent and Board of Education were made aware of this, they did, NOTHING.

The CAC members who raised these concerns outlined three major areas to the Superintendent and Board of Education:

1. The 15 materials approved by the Committee as teacher resources for the 8th grade, and the approved 8th grade curriculum, with specific reference to the inadequacies and inaccuracies found therein.
2. A listing of materials from recognized governmental and professional organizations that had either been rejected, or refused even for consideration, by the Committee.
3. A description of what could be termed; biased, improper (or possibly worse?), procedures by the Committee to suppress any non-conforming, or diverse, points of view, even those that were intended to present all factual material available and therefore establish a balance in the new curriculum.

Subsequent posts will examine each of these three areas.

While these CAC members acknowledged that the positions taken by the majority of the Committee reflected sincere and strongly held feelings, those feelings should not have compelled that majority to act in ways contrary to the express purposes for which the Committee was created, and certainly not to even create the appearance of a violation of any of the guidelines established by the BOA governing Committee protocols.

And so a question could be asked; Did the actions and recommendations of the CAC majority in the approval and development of the new sex-ed curriculum, place advancement of a social agenda before the health and welfare of our children, by refusing the inclusion of information considered contrary to that agenda, even when such information directly addressed the children’s welfare?

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