Two members of the Board of Education strongly defended Montgomery County Public School’s inclusionary and welcoming policy toward the LGBTQ community during the Thursday, Jan 12 meeting. Their statements followed remarks by two members of the public who spoke out against it.
Lindsey Smith, a member of Moms for Liberty, said MCPS has “overstepped your bounds as educators.” The district is “pushing ideas of gender ideology on their kids instead of educating them in the traditional areas of study in which teachers are trained,” she said during the public comment section of the BOE meeting.
She pointed to the book, My Rainbow, which she said was introduced to second grade students. “It pushes the transgender ideology throughout the whole book,” she said. “This is not education. This is indoctrination.”
Michael Rosenberg also addressed the BOE. Some embrace this ideology, he said. “However, there are as many, if not more, parents who still believe in traditional Judean/Christian values as taught in the Bible, that these values and beliefs are diametrically opposed to gender-fluid idealogy, and do not approve of its teaching in the MOCO elementary school system.”
According to Rosenberg, whose grandchildren will attend MCPS in the future, there are six LGBT+ books in elementary school libraries, and parents are not notified about this.
Board member Lynne Harris said those comments “disturb me personally,” adding, “Transgender, LGBTQ individuals are not an ideology. They are a reality.”
MCPS has pledged “to make sure that every student sees themselves reflected in the curriculum, and the course work that they are doing,” she said.
Student Member of the Board Arvin Kim agreed, adding that in order for MCPS to hold itself to the highest standards, all students must see themselves reflected in the classroom. “Every student has a right to be reflected in what they learn.”
Kim added, “To the students of MCPS, yes, ignorance and hate does exist within the community.”
During his remarks Rosenberg also said that parents at several elementary school “are now circulating letters of petition to be presented to their school principals demanding that they cease the distribution and teaching of these gender-fluid ideology books in the classroom.”
According to the American Library Association, in a growing national trend, a record 700 plus titles found in school libraries were challenged in 2021.
