ALAMEDA, Calif. - A San Francisco Bay area school board will use broad lessons against bias to replace a curriculum against bullying gay people that had become a national centerpiece in the opposition to same-sex marriage.
The vote by the Alameda Board of Education on Tuesday did little to ease tensions in the island city near Oakland.
A lawsuit and threats of recalling school board members accompanied debate over the so-called Lesson 9 curriculum adopted in May to prevent antigay bullying.
Gay parents in the community wanted their children protected from bullying, while other parents argued that elementary school is too early to talk to students about gay people.
The new antibullying lessons approved by the board, at the recommendation of Superintendent Kirsten Vital, will be supplemented by children’s books that explicitly address six specific forms of bias, including against gays.
“This has torn apart our community,’’ said Trish Herrera Spencer, school trustee, the board member most opposed to the gay curriculum and who was against adding the supplemental books. She said the board’s latest action did not take into consideration “the strong beliefs’’ of all in the community.
The 45-minute Lesson 9, which was to be taught once a year in each grade starting with kindergarten, sparked a lawsuit, accusations that religious families were being discriminated against, and threats of a recall election against the three board members who approved it.
Vital said her recommendation was meant to counter complaints from parents opposed to the original lesson because it highlighted only one type of bullying.
“There is not an off-the-shelf perfect curriculum that is going to work for our community,’’ Vital said, explaining that she wants to solicit book recommendations, bring them back to the school board for approval in a few months, and then work with teachers to develop accompanying lesson plans in time for the 2010-11 academic year.
Several parents said they did not trust a teachers’ committee to pick books that would address the concerns of gay and lesbian parents and parents with religious views that do not condone homosexuality.
Kathy Passmore, a lesbian mother of two, said she hears students using antigay language in her job as a sixth-grade teacher in Alameda. She urged the school board to retain the spirit of Lesson 9.