WESTWOOD REGIONAL—Following a wide-ranging 90-minute discussion of what sensitive or inappropriate topics the new state-mandated health curriculum might require teachers to cover, the Westwood Regional School District voted, 9-0, on May 12 to approve a health curriculum resource guide that should assist teachers in middle school to address the new standards.
Trustees also approved continuation of the K-5 health and physical education curriculum, which meets the updated 2020 guidelines, for the second year in a row.
Westwood Regional School District is a K-12 school district comprising six schools serving Westwood and Washington Township students. The district is Bergen County’s only regional K-12 district, though several other regional high school districts exist, including the Pascack Valley and Northern Valley regional districts.
The archived May 12 Westwood regional board meeting showed nearly 350 views when Pascack Press later scanned the online session.
The state-mandated health curriculum had been discussed in various forums lately, including a Township council meeting where several council members, including Tom Sears and Steven Cascio, criticized the new state health standards.
Previously, Republican State Sen. Holly Schepisi (D-39) briefly addressed a Township council meeting, telling a packed chamber to urge at least a delay of the new health standards, and further to seek to replace the appointees on the state board of ed.
The Comprehensive Health and Physical Education standards were updated by the state in summer 2020, and are due to go into effect this September.
The health curriculum resource approved to be used for grades 6–8 was The Great Body Shop, a curriculum resource guide that offers lesson plans that match up with the state standards.
The resource will be used by a district curriculum committee meeting over the summer to review, develop, and create lesson plans based upon the state’s new Comprehensive Health and Physical Education Standards for grades 6–8, which must be implemented starting September 2020, said Superintendent Jill Mortimer.
The district’s Office of Curriculum and Instruction posts links to the current K-5 health and physical education lessons taught, which utilize resources from The Great Body Shop., which is also linked to online.
Trustee Michael Pontillo, Westwood, also borough police chief, had concerns about topics being taught to fifth graders, as well as topics possibly mentioned in lower grades.
He cited earlier comments from a Paramus resident — whose grandchildren are in the regional district — who rattled off a list of female and male body parts and anatomy he said were being taught to second graders. That list of terms would be checked out, said the superintendent.
Matthew Andriotis, who said he had three grandkids in Washington Elementary School, said what his grandchildren would learn in September would be terms such as buttocks, anus, penis, testicles, vulva, vagina, nipples and breasts.
He provided further anatomical descriptions and noted depending on what illustrations might be used, he called the combination “kind of pornography” that may lead to “promoting sexuality.”
He said teaching about sex was best left to parents and advised schools not to teach “woke ideology religion” to students. He said children in elementary school were too young to understand calculus and suggested they were too young to understand sex and gender facts.
He and another speaker both called for a referendum on whether district schools should be allowed to teach the new Comprehensive Health and Physical Education state standards.
Both were told by district business administrator Keith Rosado that referenda are not held on local curriculum but rather on financial items, such as bonding for construction upgrades.
Much of the trustees’ 90-minute discourse focused on what topics were raised, the age-appropriateness of terms used, and how topics were being taught.
The state standards allow districts to determine for themselves how such topics and words might be discussed when they create their own curriculum based on the new state standards.
The new state standards provide overall topic areas and specific district performance expectations. The state guidelines do not provide lesson plans, just general topic areas, and they allow individual school districts latitude to teach about a topic in a way that meets with local district sensitivity while still meeting a general educational objective for students.
Mortimer said that if the Westwood regional district does not approve and meet statewide health standards during their state monitoring period — once every three years — it would lose points on a state performance system and need to create a “corrective action plan.” She said the district was being monitored this year.
Unfortunately, much misinformation and disinformation over what specifically is required by the state standards is circulating, said the state Board of Education recently.
The New Jersey Education Association issued a “disinformation alert” it said was a reaction to “politically motivated special-interest organizations and partisan politicians … bad actors … intentionally and falsely claiming that New Jersey is forcing an age-inappropriate curriculum on children.”
The state board recently asked the state attorney general’s office if it may delay the new health and physical education standards until October — from September — to review the guidelines but had not yet heard back from the AG’s office by mid-May, officials said.
Township trustee Stacey Price, who said she was a state-certified health and phys ed teacher, said the state “did a bad job” with the health curriculum standards that they approved.
Pontillo, who also is Westwood’s police chief, told trustees he was concerned that no prior discussion had occurred about the health and physical education standards. To that, board president Frank Romano noted that there were such curriculum committee discussions over the past year.
Westwood trustee Andrea Peck said the debate was not about being or not being a prude. Instead, she said the teachers teaching the topic should decide what is realistic and noted that though she watches closely over her son and daughter, she has “no control” over what her son may be seeing on friends’ social media accounts, or what they may be discussing when they are with friends.
Peck said she did not want kids exposed to inappropriate material, however parents should have conversations about uncomfortable topics and make sure they add their values and information to what their sons and daughters are hearing elsewhere.
Peck said when a final grades 6–8 health curriculum comes before the board for approval in August the board must assure it’s age-appropriate and reflects community standards. “Educating them is the way to keep them safe,” she said.
Pontillo noted that since the state board has asked to delay the standards, asking for the state attorney general’s opinion on whether that was possible, that indicates “some internal problems on the state level into how these standards were developed.”
Trustee Kristin Pedersen, Westwood, said she agreed “wholeheartedly” with Pontillo’s concerns about alleged inappropriate topics and terms being used in lower grades and taught to second and fifth grade students.
She urged trustees to “stand up when something does not feel right” and said some standards from the state, “they are not going to walk back unless we push back.”
Trustee Maureen Colombo, Washington Township, who works in a middle school, said the “hardest part is you’re trying your best as a parent to set a moral compass.” She noted the hard part is some parents have different parenting guidelines or none at all, and kids are exposed to that.
She said sometimes one conversation about an inappropriate topic “and it all gets undone.” She said some students are nor going to go to their parents for a conversation on an uncomfortable topic. She said conversations about age-appropriate health topics can equip students for other appropriate conversations on sensitive topics.
Pedersen said some children may not be able to converse with parents about sensitive health topics, but may instead feel more comfortable talking with a total stranger, which could be a problem.
She said the district should be sending a message to students that they should have conversations about sensitive topics with parents at home.
Vice president Michelle Sembler, of Westwood, a curriculum committee member, said the health and sexual education discussion had been “an ongoing topic for a long time” and urged trustees now that new state standards exist, “we have to follow the standards within reason. We can make sure these lessons are done in a thoughtful manner.”
She said the “opt-out option” is always available for parents and that the district “can be extremely transparent with all lessons for parents to review.”
She said she had reviewed all the lessons in The Great Body Shop curriculum lesson plan guide, and said they were mostly “well done, conservative, educational, informative.” She said only one lesson did not meet that standard and might not be used.
Mortimer assured trustees that they would see final lesson plans for a middle school health and physical education curriculum sometime in August, following its development.
A menu of K-5 lesson plans can be accessed by parents and taxpayers online through the district’s curriculum webpage.