Massachusetts school district violates its own transparency policy in effort to roll out new “comprehensive sex education” curriculum, prompting parents to push back; district promises to provide online access to all lesson materials

Parents pushed back at Plymouth Public Schools’ (PPS) Dec. 1 school board meeting, arguing that the district’s plan to roll out a new 8th-grade comprehensive sex education curriculum would violate its own policy on implementation timelines.

PPS’ policy states that if parents want to review sex-ed materials and they don’t feel that the superintendent has provided sufficient access, they can appeal to the school board for review, as detailed by parent group, Massachusetts Informed Parents (MIP).

During public comment, parents in opposition to the comprehensive sexual health curriculum criticized the district for a lack of transparency and raised concerns about age appropriateness, age of consent, and obscenity in the new curriculum. They said the materials weren’t available online and could only be viewed at school in a binder containing more than a hundred pages of PowerPoint printouts with six slides per page, under administrator supervision. Parents were not allowed to take copies because they were told the material is under copyright. The text of the materials in the binder was so small it was often illegible and administrators who were present were unable to answer some questions about the curriculum.

Comprehensive sexual health includes concepts and topics topics like “sex assigned at birth”, gender, gender expression and sexual orientation, according to a presentation given by district personnel at the Dec. 1 meeting.

At the PPS October 20 school board meeting, a father cited Plymouth’s policy, which states that if parents believe the superintendent has not provided adequate access to the sex-education materials, they may appeal in a process that can take up to six weeks. However, the district announced the new curriculum on October 8 and planned to implement it on October 23, leaving parents without enough time to use the district’s own appeal process, he argued, and therefore the rollout should be postponed.

It appears the principal of the Plymouth middle school, where the sex-ed curriculum was slated to be taught, sent an email in response to parents to announce the postponement the rollout of the unit in order “to deliver a comprehensive, developmentally accurate, and well-sequenced curriculum for our 8th-grade students.”

In response to transparency concerns from the community, district administrators announced at the Dec. 1 meeting that they would be posting the whole curriculum online (instead of continuing the practice of requiring that it be reviewed in a single binder at school during school hours and under supervision.)

Parents pointed out that videos from the curriculum were allegedly created by AMAZE, which is an initiative of progressive activist organization Advocates for Youth, but were removed as a result of parental pushback. Notably, AMAZE has created cartoon videos about topics like “Masturbation: Totally Normal” and “Is it Normal to Watch Porn?“

PPS has provided an opt-out form for the 8th-grade sex-ed course. According to the form, the new lessons will now begin on Friday, January 12. The form provides a list of topics, but does not contain specific information on the content of the lessons.

After submitting a public records request last month, MIP uncovered a slideshow based on the Rights, Respect, Responsibility (3Rs) Curriculum, which is a project of Advocates for Youth.

The teacher training also promoted progressive teaching ideologies to address “bias,” “racism,” “inequity” and to “respect and affirm all student identities.”

Then, it promotes resources for teachers including Planned Parenthood’s “Sex Ed To-Go.”

The group Protect Plymouth Youth planned and held an educational event for concerned parents about the sex-ed curriculum on November 18th, which was attended by nearly 250 people, local outlet the Plymouth Independent reported.

Following public comment, district administrators gave a presentation outlining the PPS health education curriculum, as well as Massachusetts state standards, which were updated in 2023 for the first time since 1999 to include physical education and health. However, the state of Massachusetts does not require schools to teach health education.

The curriculum is new to 8th graders this year, but the presentation also detailed plans to explain the curriculum to 6th and 7th graders.