Wealthy schools finally allow LGBTQ lesson opt-outs, call 'significant burden' with little evidence

Before a wealthy D.C. suburb's inspector general reported this month that criminal background checks were outdated for more than 12,000 current school employees – nearly half the district –d and that about 4,900 who "may have access to children" hadn't undergone screening by Child Protective Services, Montgomery County Public Schools had already lashed out.

Superintendent Thomas Taylor accused IG Megan Limarzi of "lack of rigor" and "glaring inaccuracies" in a July 25 response to the preview, claiming his staff was "working around the clock to accomplish the due diligence that, regrettably, your office failed to do." 

The searing accusations were gone by Wednesday, however, when Taylor thanked Limarzi in front of reporters "for elevating this" and catching the school district's failure to enroll employees hired before 2019 in the "continuous check program" RapBack. He said it will take "several months" to complete more rigorous screening, local news-radio station WTOP reported.

The RapBack snapback calls into question two years of representations by MCPS on another explosive issue, its refusal to notify parents ahead of LGBTQ lessons for children as young as 3 and let them opt out, in the reportedly most religiously diverse county in America.

Taylor announced MCPS will now notify parents every nine weeks of the topics and reading list for their children's classes and let them opt out, two months after the Supreme Court ordered MCPS to stop withholding notice and opt-out for English Language Arts "storybooks" including sex workers, kink, drag, gender transitions and elementary-age same-sex romance.

This "refrigerator curriculum" for science, math, ELA and social studies, which parents can both read digitally and post in the kitchen, will pose a "significant administrative burden" on the district, Taylor said in a briefing with reporters last week ahead of school starting Tuesday.

The district has apparently never substantiated the burden, first invoked against the lawsuit by Muslim and Christian parents when Taylor's predecessor opposed a preliminary injunction in July 2023, despite repeated requests for even vague ranges by Just the News and local media. 

Just the News asked MCPS again Friday, with no response by Saturday night. "Not to our knowledge," the parents' lawyers at religious liberty law firm Becket responded when asked if the district had ever substantiated the administrative-burden claim.

Mainstream media repeat district's evidence-thin claim

Explaining to the trial court why it yanked back its second promise to accommodate parents a day later, MCPS claimed principals were being flooded with opt-outs and honoring them would cause "significant disruptions to the classroom environment" – an exception to accommodations in Maryland law – while "undermining MCPS’s educational mission."

Public records withheld from the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a vocal leader against the no-exceptions policy, until after the preliminary injunction hearing prompted the group to accuse MCPS of misleading the court about its rationale for ending notice and opt-out.

Months of internal conversations reviewed by CAIR and Just the News contained no mention of logistical hurdles caused by accommodations, but did include talking points for teachers that suggested the district wanted to counter parents' religious teaching and tell students their views were wrong, which SCOTUS cited when it struck down the no-exceptions policy.

MCPS complicated its own legal position as the case headed for appeals, yanking from high school libraries a novel that celebrates a promiscuous gay teen sex columnist, even as it argued the "Pride" storybooks were appropriate for much younger children, claiming they simply celebrate identity and representation. (The court record documents their contents.)

Before the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals could rule on the MCPS challenge, a suburban Minneapolis school district with a similarly large Muslim population gave notice and opt-out to Somali-American families on "LGBTQ-affirming books" before they could go to court. 

Though the families' lawyers were surprised, St. Louis Park Schools made a gaffe months earlier at a board meeting. A white lesbian board member scolded hijab-clad black Muslim women for asking for accommodations rather than show "solidarity" with another "historically marginalized" group, and the board chair cut them off when they tried to respond.

The Washington Post repeated MCPS's claims about the difficulty of notice and opt-out in a report  Thursday on the new nine-week system, failing to mention the CAIR records casting doubt on MCPS's claims – part of the legal record for two years now – while citing a former administrator's legal declaration about "one incident" in one school.

The newspaper also paraphrased MCPS attorney Alan Schoenfeld's argument before SCOTUS that accommodations were difficult from a resource standpoint because young students would need "additional supervision" and "alternative classrooms and substitute lessons each time a potentially offensive topic was taught."

The Post did not mention the SCOTUS majority explicitly rejected the district's burden claims, citing "broad opt outs from discrete aspects of the public school curriculum without widespread consequences" in several states and MCPS's own "Guidelines for Respecting Religious Diversity" before the storybooks were mandated.

Superintendent Taylor resurrected the thinly sourced argument last week, noting that MCPS told SCOTUS that notice and opt-out would impose "a significant administrative burden." The Post and WTOP both quoted Taylor on the burden but not any acknowledgment that SCOTUS rejected the factual assertion.

"We have a centralized process that when somebody wants to opt out of curriculum based on religious belief, there’s a form they can fill out and it is linked to our refrigerator curriculum," Taylor also said in the briefing, according to WTOP. When parents fill out the form, "the teacher and the school staff can respond with an alternate assignment."

"He said administrators are trying to reduce some of the load on educators by designating the review and approval process to central office employees," the Post paraphrased. Teachers union President David Stein said he'll be focused on protecting teachers from the responsibilities that central office employees should be doing.

A spokesperson told the Post opt-out requests will be processed "speedily" ahead of the classroom lesson, and that principals received guidance on the process this month, but did not give a specific timeframe for review and approval.