A Lawrence family is testing boundaries in terms of what subjects should or shouldn't be taught to their child in the public school system.
A Lawrence parent's request that his child be exempted from subjects taught at Free State High School is so broad that it is raising concerns among state education officials.
The Lawrence school district is complying with the request to exempt the student from activities that touch on about 20 subject areas, including topics that could be interpreted as "values clarification."
"The breadth of that is a particular concern," said Rod Bieker, general counsel for the Kansas Department of Education. "Any one mention of anything might be construed as involving one of these matters. That's what would make it difficult."
State law mandates that a public school student is not required to participate in "any activity which is contrary to the religious teachings of the child" if the parent files proper paperwork with the school. It offers no further guidance on specifics.
Most such requests in Lawrence are related to excusing a student from instruction in sex education, district officials say, and even those are rare. Some parents shield children from discussion of substance abuse. Others have challenged specific books used in a classroom or library.
"We don't have very many of those situations," said Nettie Collins-Hart, the district's assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction, when asked about district policy on parent instructional requests.
In this case, a parent -- who declined to be identified for publication -- gave notice to the district Aug. 31 that his 11th-grade daughter was to be excused from any class, project, program or activity that delved into sex education, birth control, abortion, euthanasia, suicide, homosexuality, R-rated and X-rated films, infanticide, bestiality, sadism and masochism.
He also requested that his daughter not be subjected to "values clarification or the use of questionnaires, role playing or other strategies to question, expose or criticize any private, religious or moral values of the above-named pupil or members of his/her family."
The parent asked in a confidential letter to the district that he wanted to be notified by Free State of the planned presentation of objectionable subject matter.
Bieker, of the Kansas Department of Education, said disagreement on what constituted offensive instruction could lead to litigation.
"Whoever is teaching may not think it has anything to do with these subject matters ... but the parent might say, 'No. You fool. It does.'"
Bieker had no statewide statistics on the frequency of curriculum exemption applications. The Lawrence district didn't have an accounting of the requests either.
Regardless of how often such situations arise, Bieker said elected school boards in each district were responsible for deciding how to handle parent requests for alternative instruction.
"It's up to the local school board as far as what is doable," Bieker said.
Free State Principal Joe Snyder issued a memorandum Thursday instructing 15 staff members at the high school to comply with the Lawrence parent's request. Snyder said in the memo that he didn't anticipate problems.
"This is a general rule," Snyder said in an interview. "You try to work with people in reasonable ways -- teachers, parents and kids."
Snyder and Collins-Hart said the Lawrence public school staff could deal with such complicated academic requests from a handful of parents. But if more parents raised objections under the statutes, it would be difficult if not impossible for the district to handle divergent parental demands.
"That would be a problem," Snyder said.
Collins-Hart added: "I can't relate to 200-something because we've never had that situation."
-- Tim Carpenter's phone message number is 832-7155. His e-mail address is tcarpenter@ljworld.com.
No comments
Commenting is turned off for this story.