Parents Speak Out Against Sex Education Class At Chatham BOE Meeting

Chatham NJ

18 May, 2022

2:52 PM

Description

CHATHAM, NJ — Several Chatham mothers attended the Chatham Board of Education's regular meeting on Monday night to express their concerns about specific lessons being taught in the district's health classes. The recently revised sex education curriculum has sparked outrage across the Garden State. Prior to the mothers' public comments, board member Michelle Clark reported on the curriculum, stating that parents will have primary access to all material taught in Family Life/Sex Education classes next year and will be able to opt their children out of those classes. During the public portion of the meeting, Deirdre Rajoppi, a Chatham Township mom with two teenage daughters in the school system, expressed her concerns about a current lesson being taught in the current CHS 11th grade health class. According to Rajoppi, the lesson required all students to visit a website called the Safe Zone Project, where they were instructed to find three unfamiliar terms and discuss them with their classmates. The website included terms related to the LGTBQ+ community, which Rajoppi read off to the board. "This really has nothing to do with health or science but is a sexual ideology that is inappropriate and is a threat to our children's emotional and mental well-being," Rajoppi said. "It will create confusion in their minds and has the potential to create unnecessary anxiety and depression and desensitizing children to sexual topics will put them at greater risk of sexual abuse," Rajoppi said. Carla Banduci was the following Chatham mother to speak on the subject. Banduci expressed concern about the new National Sex Education standards on gender identity for students in grades 4 through 6. "The way these subjects are being proposed to be taught to young students directly contradicts, in my opinion, the earliest teachings in a basic biology class and represent social, moral and personal preference issues, such social and morality issues should be and have always been the responsibility of the parents," Banduci said. "Having these subjects taught in a classroom by teachers, all of which might have different moral compass than the parents, lets social issues, in my opinion, creep into child core education," Banduci said. Libby Hilsenrath, another parent, expressed concern about a human sexuality assignment given to both juniors and seniors in Chatham. Students were asked to watch a video and then match terms like asexual, binary system, bisexual, cisgender and pansexual to their definitions. After the public comments were made, Chatham Board of Education President Jill Critchley Weber spoke out in reference to the parent's concerns. "The school district is certainly not trying to control the narrative," Weber said in response to Banduci. "Yours is the simplest question to answer. The schools have to deliver the curriculum set by the state, it's as simple as that." "I don't agree that the curriculum is a threat to anyone's well-being, but Dr. LaSusa can dig into it," Weber said. "Some of you folks throw out the word indoctrination. I don't believe anybody's being indoctrinated by the curriculum. Just because you say it doesn't make it so." Concerns similar to Chatham's parents' worries have been raised in other parts of New Jersey, including Lacey, Toms River and Cranford. Superintendent LaSusa responded, saying, "our current health and physical education curriculum reflects the New Jersey learning standards that have been in place since 2014. We are making final adjustments to our curriculum now to reflect the 2020 revision to those standards so that next school year our curriculum continues to reflect the learning standards established by the State of New Jersey. Our curriculum is age-appropriate and designed to provide students with the knowledge and skills to lead healthy responsible lives." Thank you for reading! Have a news tip, correction or comment? Email [email protected]. Learn more about posting announcements or events to your local Patch site. Subscribe to your local Patch newsletter here.