Dear Safe Schools Coalition members and friends,
[School Board to choose among diversity curricula tonight, including "That's A Family!"]
(1) Novato:Diversity's battleground
[School Board to choose among diversity curricula tonight, including "That's A Family!"]
by Jane Futcher
The Marin Independent Journal
http://www.marinij.com
"That's a Family" played at the White House. It played at a National Parent Teachers Association conference in San Antonio in June. It is playing in 78 American school districts in 41 states.
But the prize-winning, 35-minute educational documentary on non-traditional families may not play in Novato.
The film has become the flash point in a swirling debate over a proposed supplemental diversity curriculum pilot program that has engulfed the Novato Unified School District.
"Nothing has gone on to the extent that it has in Novato, to my knowledge," said Debra Chasnoff, director of the film, now offered as a resource to teachers in all 80 Oakland School District elementary and middle schools.
The emotional debate that has consumed long hours of public meeting time is just one of many that have embroiled the district over the past year and a half.
Last December, eight parents sued the school board for violating their rights as parents when two elementary schools allowed their children to see "Cootie Shots," a diversity presentation on name-calling.
The school board's handling this spring of two student Gay-Straight Alliance groups drew complaints of discrimination from club supporters and moral outrage from those who object to the inclusion of gays in diversity materials.
At last month's school board meeting, two members of the public questioned the competence of Superintendent John Bernard, whose contract was under review, and called for his resignation, while former Novato High School principal Jerry Kenney blamed the high rate of staff and teacher turnover, low morale and lack of focus on curriculum and instruction on the administration's "authoritarian and ineffective" approach.
Things could get hotter.
The school board meeting set for Aug. 20 will probably be standing room only,
as the trustees select which of six supplemental diversity materials they will adopt on a pilot basis and for which grades. Parents who favor the inclusion of gays in some materials and those who oppose it will be on hand to vie for the trustees' hearts, minds and votes.
"I haven't kept records, but ... there's been the most buzz about it within the community since I've been on the board - 19 years," said trustee Jeff McAlpin.
Why Novato?
None of Marin County's 18 other school districts have adopted programs for ensuring safe, respectful learning environments that are as ambitious and thorough as Novato's 1999 "Equity Action Plan."
"We do not have anything formal like Novato's trying to put together," said Stephen Rosenthal, superintendent of the Shoreline Unified School District. "We are watching what Novato is doing and trying to learn from them."
Tamalpais Union and San Rafael Elementary and High School district officials say they are working hard to create safe and tolerant school environments, but they have not adopted diversity action plans.
It is Novato - not West Marin, Mill Valley, Larkspur, San Rafael or San Anselmo - that is spending a $430,000 grant to send every school district employee to Los Angeles for the "Tools for Tolerance" training at the Simon Weisenthal Museum of Tolerance.
It is Novato that has appointed a 40-member Diversity Advisory Committee to review and recommend supplemental pilot materials on bullying, name-calling and harassment.
It is also the place where residents are battling most fiercely over who should be included under the diversity umbrella.
History, location and changing demographics have played an important role in the Novato school district's recent troubles.
Novato has always been more politically and socially conservative, more rural and more solidly working class than Southern or Central Marin. Its lower rents and more affordable home prices and its military base at Hamilton Field attracted families with young children as well as many churches that served them.
The rapid growth and development of the past two decades has brought change to the largely white and once-homogenous community. Its population is 82 percent white, according to the 2000 census.
"In a nutshell, I think the community of Novato is in transition," said Novato school board President Ross Millerick. "And we're seeing a more complicated community with more diverse values and groups, and we're coming to grips with those differences in values and interests."
"We also have many conservative people in Novato," trustee Perry Newman said. "Many Christian right in Novato." The district's board has seven members.
Trustee Roger Collins:"I grew up in San Francisco with all kinds of people. A lot of people in our district are white, middle class kids. Up until recently we didn't have a lot of racial diversity."
Trustee Bill King welcomes the changing, more multi-cultural make-up of the city.
"We have a diverse community, and in that community we have children who come from parents of varying backgrounds," King, an African American, said. "My commitment is that no matter who the child is, that child deserves every opportunity to come into our very excellent school system and be treated with dignity, be given the maximum opportunity and it doesn't matter who their parents are. You've never heard this school district say we support presentations in our classrooms that teach about homosexuality. We also don't say that about heterosexuality."
Newman thinks clashes over diversity in Novato are the result of a "confluence" of demographics and events, including two significant incidents in the late 1990s.
The first occurred in February 1998, when some San Marin High School fans yelled racial epithets at members of the visiting Tamalpais High School basketball team from Mill Valley. Citing its "hostile environment" for student athletes, the Marin County Athletic League put San Marin on probation for more than a year.
The following year, 17-year-old, openly gay student Adam Colton stumbled into a classroom at San Marin High and said he'd been attacked, for the second time. The alleged hate crime, coming just four months after the brutal murder of gay college student Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyo., made headlines and raised community concerns about the safety of Novato's schools and the potential dangers of unchecked bullying and name-calling. No suspects were ever identified.
The Colton case also put Novato on America's map as a community with a problem.
"All you have to do is a search of Adam Colton's name, and on any gay Web site across the country, across the world, you'll find Adam Colton right under Matthew Shepard," said Novato school trustee Leslie Schwarze. "The urban legend came from this, and that's why we're ground zero."
In an ongoing effort to keep Novato schools safe for all students, in September 1999 the school board adopted a 95-page "Equity Action Plan," described as "an intervention plan to address acceptance and respect for all." The plan outlines dozens of activities that administrators, teachers and community members should undertake to foster respect for differences in and outside the classroom.
The Diversity Advisory Committee, which helped develop that plan, recommended in May 2001 that the school board pilot three supplemental diversity curriculum programs.
"That's a Family"
If the Novato School District is ground zero in a national debate on school safety and diversity education, "That's a Family" is the bull's eye. Approved again this year by the Diversity Advisory Committee for grades four through eight, the documentary has been endorsed by Greenbrae's Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and the presidents of a host of national organizations, including the American Psychological Association's Family Psychology Division, the National Council of Negro Women and the Foundation for Grandparenting.
The film contains interviews of children growing up in non-traditional families - being raised by grandparents, guardians and foster parents, parents of different races, adoptive parents, divorced and single parents and lesbian or gay parents.
The inclusion of the gay-parented families in a video for children is what disturbs the film's critics the most.
"What is not a family is same-sex adults living together to raise children," said Sara Lockwood,
a Novato mother of nine and representative of the newly formed First Educators Alliance. "Our position is this is not a natural state of nature for children to grow up in." Lockwood, who cannot say how many members are in her group but thinks the number will soon reach "three digits," terms the curriculum fight part of a larger "cultural war" being fought across the nation.
"It's a cultural war because there's a fundamental difference between the people who are promoting the homosexual lifestyle and those promoting the traditional lifestyle," she said.
Novato resident Jennifer Baker, the mother of 7-month-old Jacob, is a member of First Educators Alliance. The 28-year-old financial assistant said she believes kids are better served learning about diversity issues in the home.
"Let the schools teach what they are supposed to teach," she said. "We've gotten into such a political correctness mode ... kids are being overwhelmed with issues that don't belong in schools. I'm the parent, let me be the parent. They don't need to know why Jimmy has two mommies. I can teach him that."
"This kind of homophobic drivel is not new," said state Sen. Sheila Kuehl, a lesbian and author of AB537, California School Safety and Violence Prevention Act of 2000. "These same groups have been promoting their hate-filled agenda for at least 20 years. They felt very safe so long as no gay people ever spoke about their gayness. ... Fortunately, most normal Americans reject that kind of hate-mongering, and the fact that we only hear it from a few towns and school districts in California actually gives me great hope that there are only certain pockets where these bigots have retreated, and their fight gets more desperate as they perceive it to be a losing battle. What is normal in America is equality."
Novato Police Chief Brian Brady, a strong supporter of the district's attempts to make schools safe for all students, hopes "That's a Family" will win the school board's support.
"I've seen the film and sexual orientation is just one of a number of families they talk about," Brady said. "The more information we have out there, I think the better off we are."
Chasnoff, whose film company, Women's Educational Media, has won a three-year, $900,000 grant from the California Endowment to work with school districts on violence prevention, says her film is not an attempt to preempt parents' rights. According to its Web site, the California Endowment is the state's largest health care foundation with $3.4 billion in assets.
"This film is not going to prevent any parent from telling their children whatever they want to tell them about gay people and gay relationships at home over the dinner table," she said. "There is no sexual discussion anywhere in this film. This is not a sex ed film. That's a really distracting issue. This film will hopefully help prevent name-calling, being ostracized because of being different in many ways."
Trustee Cindi Clinton hopes all district residents understand that "That's a Family" and the other materials being considered by the school board Aug. 20 are being tested, not formally adopted, to ensure student safety and are "supplemental" - not required to be used in class or as part of the "core curriculum."
"Everyone is entitled to their opinion on homosexuality, diversity and on many different social issues," Clinton said. "But what's important to me when you walk into our district and have any interaction with our district is that you are treated the same as anyone else, with respect, humanity and a caring environment."
Parental rights
"Schools are being used for the sexualization of our children," said First Educators' Alliance member Kathleen Westenberg of Novato. "I don't have a problem with certain issues in family life, but sometime it goes beyond a family's beliefs and values. It's overstepping parental rights."
To ensure parental rights are respected, the state Education Code allows parents to "opt out" their children from family life or sexual education classes and other instruction that may conflict with their religious beliefs. Parents usually sign opt-out forms at the beginning of the school year and are notified by schools in advance when such programs are scheduled.
Westenberg said that's not enough. "Not if they are going to introduce (homosexuality) into the core curriculum," she said. "They would have to opt out of every classroom. That's where the state of California Legislature is trying to go with this. You cannot function with that many opt-outs."
Trustee McAlpin agrees. "A lot of parents may not be on top of what's going on in the school enough to decide if their children should be out," he said. "Parents and students are relying on us as a district to be presenting material and information that is reasonably accepted by a broad group of the community."
The safety issue
Novato High School graduate Jed Levine, a leader of his school's Gay-Straight Alliance, was the victim of a hate crime last October, when a fellow student spray-painted his name and homophobic epithets on a school building.
"It completely destroys any safety net you felt you had," said Levine, who made peace with the perpetrator and has given a school presentation with him on hate crimes. "While I didn't ever feel like my life's in danger ... there's always the possibility that this could happen again."
Student safety, and how to ensure it, inspired the Gay-Straight Alliance at Novato and San Marin high schools to request permission to give classroom presentations during the school year.
After months of negotiating, the GSA was, at the last minute, told by district administrators that a regulation required permission be granted by Site Council groups at both schools. According to Levine, no other student group had been made to jump through so many hoops, but Novato High GSA won the approval. When San Marin's group ran out of time, the school board, after heated public comment, rejected both requests in May.
As concerns grew about school safety and the school board's apparent reluctance to approve such diversity materials as "That's a Family," United for Safe Schools Novato, a grassroots coalition of citizens and agencies, formed in May "with the understanding that, through education we create a more tolerant and respectful school and community environment." The group, chaired by Novato parent Lynne Wasley, has more than 100 individual members and 23 coalition members, including the Marin Human Rights Commission, the Democratic Central Committee, the Marin Interfaith Council and state Sen. John Burton, D-San Francisco.
"This is a very mainstream issue," said Wasley, the mother of five daughters, including two who attend Novato schools and one who teaches in the district. "These are mainstream materials. There is nothing radical or extreme about them."
In June, United for Safe Schools Novato presented a petition signed by 620 Novato residents urging the district to approve appropriate diversity instructional materials as soon as possible. At the same board meeting, 48 pediatricians of Marin County issued a statement saying they would "continue to provide unbiased support for both gay and straight youth and children of all familiar structures," as per the American Academy of Pediatrics recommendation.
But proponents of traditional family values said, and continue to say, that the safety issue is being used by "homosexual activists" to promote homosexuality. Some are distributing at school board meetings the National Parents Advisory, the magazine of two "pro-family" organizations American Family Association of California and the Pro-Family Law Center of Abiding Truth Ministries.
One article, "The Danger of 'Safe Schools,'" argues that the Gay Lesbian Straight Educators Network used its Safe Schools campaign as "a Trojan horse to get homosexual activism into the public schools."
"Literally hundreds of public high schools have been transformed, to a greater or lesser degree, into training grounds for pro-'gay' militancy," states the magazine, which trustee McAlpin's wife, Margie, personally delivered to two trustees. Attempts by the Independent Journal to interview McAlpin were unsuccessful.
Lockwood, who hopes to foil attempts at "promoting the homosexual lifestyle in schools," says that Novato schools are already safe, and supports her argument with recent data from the California Safe Schools Assessment, released in April 2002. State statistics for Novato showed only one hate crime was reported the year before in a school population of about 7,800.
"The basis for the argument has been the safety of our children in school, but the statistics say safety is at an all-time high in Novato schools," Lockwood said. "One (hate crime) in 7,800 is not enough to take action that is fully against the wishes of the parents in the schools."
Superintendent Bernard stands behind the district's efforts to make schools safe and cautioned against using the state crime statistics as proof that safety is not an issue in Novato schools.
"Many behaviors that create an unsafe and unwelcome environment such as name-calling are not reportable as crimes in the state format," Bernard said. "Stating that efforts to improve school safety for all children is an attempt by the state to insert a homosexual agenda is misaligned."
Board faces critics
"It's hard to know when you're sitting on the board what's the prevailing position in the district," said trustee Newman. "We can't listen to who speaks the loudest. We have to address it. It's here. We have families in our school that are different and their children deserve to be safe, whoever they are."
School board trustee Roger Collins, who supports diversity materials that are age-appropriate, said encouraging kids to be accepting of gay people is not promoting homosexuality, nor is it likely to change a child's sexual orientation.
"I don't think people are going to be flocking to become homosexuals because homosexuals are allowed to say that they exist and have a good life," Collins said. "And I don't think that people are going to be to be able to become traditional families even if they want to be. I don't understand the 'cultural war' part, and the word scares me. War implies violence, and I would hope we're not going to get to the point of being violent about it."
Schwarze said she feels caught between two opposing activist groups gay rights advocates whom she believes are promoting their "lifestyle" through the diversity curriculum, and traditional family values groups who, she says, while not religious, often get their foothold in the community through churches.
"I think the rest of us are in the middle," she said. "It's hard enough to raise children. The rest of us just want to get on with our lives."
As an educator who believes in teaching the "essentials," Schwarze thinks class time should be used to build a strong educational foundation in the basics, not to teach social issues topics better left to parents at home. "I don't think it's our job to cover every single person's life at home in school," she said. "You're going to leave somebody out."
After last year's flap over diversity curriculum and "That's a Family," Schwarze suggested that the Diversity Advisory Committee include what she termed more "regular" people.
Wasley, who had served for years on the diversity advisory committee for several years, says anyone was free to join. As a mother of five with two children in Novato schools, she said she is very "regular."
"I almost choked when I heard this. Almost all the parents on the Diversity Advisory are in 'traditional' heterosexual marriages with 2.4 kids and a dog and a cat, likewise myself, except that I have five kids and two dogs and two cats."
Wasley resigned in dismay after the board reconstituted the Diversity Advisory Committee last winter, requiring members be appointed by school principals and site leadership. Two of the new appointees were Robin Strom and Jim Mefford, who have both publicly expressed reservations about including homosexuality in any diversity materials. Neither responded to requests to be interviewed by the Independent Journal.
"To me it felt like putting an avowed racist on the board of the NAACP," Wasley said. "I felt that in an attempt to make it more diverse, there were people put on that committee who had a clear mission, which they had argued previously on many, many occasions, which was that they were not tolerant of any form of diversity education that included normalization of homosexuality. We were putting people on a committee which was looking at ways to increase tolerance in our school environment and here we were putting people on with beliefs exactly the opposite of that."
Wasley regrets that some of those residents opposed to inclusive diversity curriculum have used the threat of litigation to get their way with the school board.
"Everything they do they seem to throw in a lawsuit component," she said. "My sense is that they're bullying people with that. We have a district that is near bankruptcy, that has financial issues, and so the idea that using district money to fight these lawsuits, even if the district wins they can't afford this."
Contact Jane Futcher via e-mail at jfutcher@marinij.com
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(2) Programs up for approval at school board session [list of the options under consideration]
By IJ report
The Marin Independent Journal
http://www.marinij.com
These programs are being considered for approval at the Aug. 20 meeting of the Novato Unified School District Board of Trustees:
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