The Westbrook School Committee approved a new health curriculum that includes discussion of contraception for eighth-graders last week, despite protests from a vocal group of parents.
The adoption of the new curriculum has been contentious throughout because of the changes to the health curriculum at the junior high, and the final meeting to adopt the curriculum last week was no exception.
The School Committee was forced to go into recess to stop speakers who had reached their allotted time limit when the speakers refused to stop speaking. Even before the meeting began, the police were called because people were handing out fliers on school grounds.
Several parents objected to the new curriculum at last Wednesday’s meeting and criticized the school department’s process for adopting the new curriculum. The parents said the schools had not gone far enough to include parents in the process.
However, school officials said the school department had gone beyond the normal procedure for adopting curriculum to include the public. Usually the Curriculum Committee has the authority to approve new curricula, without a vote from the full school board. But in this case board members thought it would be better to decide the matter in full committee.
Before the proceedings began, Westbrook parent George Rodrigues, who has spoken out against the teaching of contraception in junior high, passed fliers out on school property with Maine Grass Roots Coalition member Paul Madore. The fliers were intended to inform parents attending a chorale concert at the school that the school committee was voting on the new health curriculum that night, according to Rodrigues.
School Committee Chairman Colleen Hilton said Rodrigues and Madore were asked to leave school property by representatives of the Westbrook schools, according to a school policy that prohibits passing out sales or political fliers on school property. Police were called to the scene, and when asked to arrest Rodrigues and Madore, police listened to both sides and decided the pair was not breaking the law, Hilton said.
During public comment at the committee meeting, Hilton recessed the meeting after a representative of the Christian Civic League, Mike Hein, went over his allotted three-minute speaking time and continued to speak after Hilton asked him to stop and banged a gavel several times.
Hilton recessed the meeting a second time when Rodrigues spoke beyond his three minutes. Rodrigues called the new curriculum “the culmination of an agenda-driven effort by certain employees of the Westbrook school district who are seeking to impose their own values on the children of Westbrook.”
After the second recess, the remaining speakers kept within their three minutes and the meeting continued smoothly.
“I think that was really good work by the curriculum committee,” Assistant Superintendent Jan Breton said in an interview after the meeting, speaking of the curriculum approved by the committee last Wednesday. “It’s about 50 pages long. I think (certain members of the public have) focused on two items out of hundreds.”
According to Breton and other school department representatives, including School Health Coordinator Sandy Hale, the process for approving this curriculum involved much more public input and took far longer than what is normal.
“There was a lot of input, but I think most of the input was from a vocal minority,” said Breton, who added the school attempted to vote on the issue months ago but opted to hold an additional public hearing in March to respond to Rodrigues’ concerns that not enough of the community was being represented in the process. “As a community, I don’t know what more we could have done,” she said.
Rodrigues and Westbrook activist Robert Foley did not agree that enough time had been given to the matter for public discussion. Foley said parents were only given a week or so to look over the latest curriculum before a final vote. Rodrigues said he believed an agenda in the school department drove the issue being passed without enough time for discussion.
“It’s a little disturbing to me to keep hearing the conspiracy theory that this was rushed through,” Breton said.
Theresa Foley, wife of Robert Foley, said she was not against the new health curriculum but just wanted to be informed on exactly what the schools would be teaching. Theresa Foley has been vocal along with her husband in the last few months at public meetings on this issue. She said she could accept the new curriculum as long as parents are given ample opportunity to review a syllabus and opt their child out of any class the parents are not comfortable with.
“I was never against it as long as we have time to review (material),” she said. “Overall, I’m glad. The dialogue is there. And the people who are against (the sex ed teaching material) will opt out.”
Regarding last Wednesday’s heated meeting, Foley said she had been worried she wouldn’t be given the opportunity to speak if other speakers didn’t follow the rules of the proceedings. “They were only making it harder for us,” she said of Rodrigues and the Christian Civic League speakers. “If the Christian (Civic League member) gets up and wants to speak. Okay. But do it in three minutes.”
Rodrigues declined to discuss Wednesday’s meeting in a later interview but reiterated his belief that the budget was the result of certain school department members pushing through an agenda based on their own values and not the values of all the residents of Westbrook.
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