NEISD Board Rejects Grievance Against SexED Curriculum
Grievance made by fellow trustee member
The North East Independent School District’s board voted Monday to keep the district’s sex education curriculum in place, rejecting a grievance filed by a trustee, Steve Hilliard, in 2019, that sought to remove it.
The complaint had argued that the current sex education curriculum does not stress abstinence as the preferred method of preventing pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, as required by state law.
About 50 people filled the board room, divided roughly into two camps: critics of the district’s sex ed curriculum, including members of the San Antonio Family Association, a conservative group that had backed Hilliard’s election to the board in 2020, and other parents who had served on the district’s School Health Advisory Council (SHAC), which reviewed and recommended the sex education curriculum.
Hilliard filed the complaint in December of 2019. The district concluded the following August that it had not been filed in time. That contention was overruled on appeal by Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath, who ordered the board to hear it on its merits, describing a chain of events that began when Hilliard’s daughter “was incorrectly assigned to the sex education class for one day.”
That mistake was mentioned in an NEISD response to Hilliard’s appeal sent to the Texas Education Agency, but in an interview after Monday’s meeting, his wife, Paula Hilliard, said it never happened and that their daughter had nothing to do with why he filed the grievance. She said their concern about the sex education curriculum stemmed from attending a presentation about it conducted by a “parent researcher.”
The grievance argued the curriculum mentions abstinence as just one option out of many that students can choose for themselves, and therefore violates the state education code, which requires schools to teach abstinence as the “preferred choice of behavior.”
Steven Hilliard was in the audience at Monday’s meeting but did not attend as a trustee. His wife presented his case to the board. Responding to an interview request, he replied via email Tuesday that the grievance was “a personal matter as a parent completely unrelated to and preceding my elected office.”
The board unanimously voted to deny the remedy Hilliard had proposed in the grievance, which would have replaced the current sex education curriculum, which is called “Draw the Line,” with the curriculum that was taught at the district prior to 2016.
But the board agreed with another proposed remedy, that trustees review any curriculum in its entirety before they vote to adopt it. The board unanimously voted to make that its policy.
Hilliard also had wanted the board to require SHAC meetings be open to the public. The board voted to do so Monday, but that change already had been made on Sept. 1, required by a new state law, House Bill 1525, district spokeswoman Aubrey Chancellor said after the meeting.
Besides Hilliard, trustee Terri Williams was absent.
Paula Hilliard told the board that parents don’t recognize “that the curriculum is not abstinence but teaches children that they can draw the line at whatever sexual activity they are comfortable with right now. … The only standard is an adolescent’s feeling and we as parents know how quickly feelings of adolescents can change at that age.”
“There is no anchor for students,” she said. “Abstinence serves as an anchor — telling students abstinence until marriage is an anchor, which is not taught, and that is required by law.”
Hilliard said the SHAC process was not transparent and the board “rubber stamped” its recommendation.
Jason Pirruccello, the director of Human Resources Records and Compliance at the district, responded with his own presentation, stressing that the sex education curriculum is fully optional; students only take the course when their parents opt-in.
He also said at least seven school districts in Bexar County teach the same curriculum and that the Texas Education Agency review panel had recommended it for HIV and AIDS prevention in Texas.
“If ‘Draw the Line’ violates state law, why would the TEA review panel recommend it? That makes no sense,” Pirruccello said, making a point that was later echoed by board president Shannon Grona.
Another trustee, Sandy Winkley, said it was “really improbable” that the district could teach an illegal curriculum for years and “not have any agency, whether it be TEA or anybody, coming to our door saying, ‘You are violating code.’”
Trustees noted that in January, they had ordered the SHAC to review the curriculum again and recommend whether to keep or replace it.
“I’ve had children that have gone through (this curriculum). I’ve also spoken to teachers that tell me abstinence is the best choice,” trustee David Beyer said. “I think we are aligned with the intent and the spirit of the code.”
Fourteen audience members addressed the board. Four of them supported Hilliard’s grievance, voicing similar concerns about abstinence not being the preferred method taught and accusing the district of violating their parental rights to choose the best education for their kids.
Some called trustees’ questioning of Paula Hilliard hostile and unfair.
Many of the other 10 speakers identified themselves as members of the SHAC and said they would never have approved a curriculum that they believed harmed their children.
Letti Bresnahan, a former board president, took issue with the idea that the school district ignored the law.
“I would like to remind the audience, the administrators, and everyone in this room that the process by which educational curriculum was adopted was in complete alignment with district policy, which is reflective of TEA code,” she said. “I looked at the code again and every step of that code was followed.”
After the meeting, Kellie Gretschel, a sex educator for the San Antonio Family Association, said she was disappointed by how the board voted.
“I’ve worked with them before, and I don’t expect anything will go very quickly without a lot more conversation. It can be a struggle,” she said. “We want to cooperate and work with the district, but we need a process to have our voices heard.”
Grievance hearings before school boards are private unless those who filed the grievance ask that it be public. Monday’s meeting was done in public at Steven Hilliard’s request, Chancellor confirmed.
Written By Claire Bryan
[email protected]
Claire Bryan joined the Express-News education team in August 2021. She previously worked as a business reporter at the Albany Times Union and an education reporter at Chalkbeat. She began her journalis
Claire Bryan, Staff writer
Updated: March 23, 2022 3:04 p.m.