Students and parents testified before the Montgomery County school board Tuesday regarding opt-out choices for LGBTQ+ reading material in schools.
Ahead of the meeting that day, parents and advocates on both sides rallied outside of the school board meeting building in Rockville.
MCPS will end its opt-out program starting next school year if classes concern reading literacy and other topics and are not strictly about human growth and sexuality. The school system has chosen six picture books involving LGBTQ+ to be included in literacy classes for elementary schoolers.
State law dictates families can only opt out of classes specifically about human growth and sexuality, MCPS Associate Superintendent Niki Hazel previously explained.
On Tuesday, some urged the school board to reinstate opt-outs while others supported LGBT inclusion in MCPS curriculum.
“If we are not informing children of the world around them, is the educational system truly doing its job?” said MCPS student Juliet Allen, who supports the curriculum.
“It’s like teaching algebra in kindergarten, kids at local elementary schools are being asked to support and celebrate a lifestyle that I don’t believe they can truly understand at their age,” said Ibrahim Raziuddin, an MCPS class of 2023 graduate who testified on behalf of his elementary-age cousins.
“Reading a book about same-sex parents won’t make them queer,” but will help them understand others “have every right to live without shame and fear,” said Nicholas Allen, who said he is bisexual and the father of a gender fluid student.
“Religion is not just private worship, it involves public expression on social and moral issues,” said former MCPS student Yasmeen Elkoshairi, who requested restoration of an opt-out option.
“Let me be clear, please stop making this about hate, this is about parents having a choice in their children’s education,” said parent and community member Adeel Tareen.
“Why do we as parents not have the right to what our children are taught in the schools?” said Mujtaba Yahya, who said he and his family have been longtime county residents.
“The place where we differ, is that I think that they are feeling that to allow Muslim families to opt their children out of those books — of those pieces of literature — that are LGBTQIA inclusive, that that does not harm the LGBTQIA+ community, and the fact is that it does,” said Councilmember Kristin Mink, who addressed the board following public comment.
School Board Member Lynne Harris defended the work of the board.
“It does diminish a human being to say seeing a character like you in a book is of such affront to some of your fellow students that they can leave the room and not hear a story that has a character — just a character — like you,” Harris said.
