Lawrence teachers wary of bill holding them criminally liable for harmful material

A bill passed by the Kansas Senate that would hold teachers criminally responsible for exposing students to so-called sexually inappropriate material has many people in Lawrence feeling uneasy.

Senate Bill 56 removes an exemption for teachers from public, private and parochial schools when it comes to minors being exposed to harmful materials, which is defined as “any description, exhibition, presentation or representation, in whatever form, of nudity, sexual conduct, sexual excitement or sadomasochistic abuse.”

Advocates of the bill say it is important to protect children from obscene material and that it would not block anything with scientific or literary value from entering a classroom. But teachers in the Lawrence school district say the potential exists for the law to be broadly abused.

This sex-ed poster from Hocker Grove Middle School in Shawnee has inspired legislation that would require districts to receive written permission from parents before students would be allowed to take part in sex education classes.

“The way I would foresee it, infringement would happen because some parent would come in and raise a fuss and threaten to have a teacher arrested,” said David Reber, a Free State High School science teacher who is also a lead negotiator for the local teachers union. “Word would get around and after a while you’d have a lot of people avoiding certain topics and certain books so they wouldn’t be subject to that.”

“It only takes one parent who’s upset,” added Mike Wormsley, a social studies teacher at Liberty Memorial Central Middle School.

The bill was first proposed a year ago and went nowhere. But this year the bill was met without debate and passed the Senate 26-14. It was introduced to the House Feb. 26, where it was referred to the judiciary committee.

The bill was inspired by a sex education poster displayed at a Shawnee Mission middle school last year that was removed after controversy erupted. Under the title “How do people express their sexual feelings?” it listed various acts, from “dancing” to “vaginal intercourse.”

Lawrence Superintendent Rick Doll said those kinds of incidents, given their rarity, are best left to a district to resolve on its own.

In an email to the Journal-World, Sarah Oatsvall, the district’s assistant director of teaching and learning, said the district has received “very few” parental concerns regarding sex education since adopting new content standards in May 2013. This year, she said, only six out of more than 700 ninth-graders opted out of sex education classes, while nine out of more than 2,400 middle school students did the same.

“In the few instances that we have had parent questions, the teachers have been more than willing to meet with the parents, show them all course materials that will be taught and answer any questions,” she said. “This has been very successful in helping support the comfort level of our parents.”

Teachers in other disciplines are also prepared to make accommodations. Wormsley, along with Jeff Plinsky, a Lawrence High School English teacher who is also active in the local teachers union, both said they have provided students with alternative assignments when parents raise concerns over course material.

Both said that system has worked well in the past. But if this bill were law, Plinsky said he would feel reluctant to use a novel like “The Kite Runner,” which contains sexually explicit material, in a conservative community.

“It’s not very difficult to envision a scenario where that goes horribly, horribly wrong,” he said.

At a hearing in front of the Senate Committee on Corrections and Juvenile Justice in February, Phillip Cosby, the state director for the American Family Action of Kansas and Missouri, said the current exemption that exists for teachers is a “discouraging second hurdle for any enforcement, effectively exempting K-12 educators from the law that all other citizens are held accountable.”

But Jerry Jost, the father of a Free State High student, said the public should trust school districts to construct healthy conversations about sexuality and other topics.

“There is plenty of oversight in our classrooms,” he said. “We need to support our teachers who develop rich, diverse curricula.”