Bigoted parents pulled about 650 children from the Rocklin Unified School District in California on May 1st. for one day, protesting a new state mandated LGBT-inclusive curriculum.
California is the first state to do so in the public-school system.
On May 1, the Rocklin Unified School District approved a history and social science curriculum to include the work of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people. By doing so, the district is obeying the FAIR Education Act, passed in 2011 and requiring schools to educate children about people of all sexual orientations and racial ethnicities, both in history and social science.
A small group of opponents of the new curriculum led by Rachel Crutchfield of the Informed Parents of Rocklin attended the meeting.
We believe that anyone who has made a significant contribution to society should, of course, be included in our history textbooks. However, the concept of sexual orientation is far too complex of a topic for elementary-aged children to be introduced to at school. Children in second grade simply do not have the tools to comprehend sexuality, nor do we want them to. Let’s let kids be kids. We can connect a person’s sexual orientation to their accomplishments in later grades when kids are more ready to fully comprehend these complex sexual topics.”
A representative for the bigoted group, which called for the May 3rd sit-out, which pulled about 650 of the children from school for the day would not comment on the action. The school district serves almost 14,000 children.
The school district released the statement, “On May 1, 2019 the Rocklin Unified School District Board of Trustees voted 3-2 to adopt a high quality History Social-Science curriculum designed to meet the needs of our most gifted and struggling students. It is recommended by our committee of teachers who did a tremendous amount of work and reviewed and piloted the curriculum. The curriculum addresses the state mandated Fair, Accurate, Inclusive and Respectful) FAIR Act. This means History Social-Science learning materials will include the contributions of various groups, including people with disabilities, ethnic groups and those who identify as LGBT. We respect all our families opinions and feedback and moving forward we will take extra care in developing the best course of action to ensure our families’ values are respected. We will also continue to engage our families regarding the implementation of this curriculum.”
