Foster-Glocester Regional School District denies public records request for lesson plans/assignments of seventh grade sexual education curriculum; claims no documents exist alerting parents of opt-out procedures

Parents Defending Education submitted a public records request to the Foster-Glocester Regional School District seeking the sexual education curriculum and related documents from the seventh grade health class at Ponaganset Middle School. PDE specifically provided the school district with the following six requests:

1.Curriculum for Health Grade 7 relating to Sex Ed, as taught by [teacher] during the 2022-2023 school year, entire year.

2.Copies of all scope and sequence documents relating to #1 above.

3.Copies of all lesson plans and assignments that were given relating to #1 above. This includes, but is not limited to, videos that were shown during class or assigned as homework, study guides/vocabulary words/definition documents distributed to or discussed with students, and copies of all worksheets, handouts, projects, practice question/answer sheets given to or discussed with students.

4.Copy of any emails sent to parents by anyone in the district alerting them of opt-out procedures.

5. Copies of any instruction(s) to the students regarding confidentiality or secrecy.

6. Copies of any “classroom agreements” or classroom rules that were agreed to by students.

For the third request regarding copies of lesson plans and assignments, the district explained that “these documents are the work product of the instructor so therefore are not public documents.”

For the fourth, fifth, and sixth requests, PDE was told that “no document exists.”

Below is the curriculum that the school district did provide to PDE: