San Juan Capistrano : ‘Family Life’ Curriculum Meeting to Be Protested

Protesters are hoping to drum up a large audience for Monday night’s Capistrano Valley Unified School District board meeting, at which the board will discuss expansion of the district’s controversial “family life” curriculum to elementary school students.

Critics claim that the curriculum teaches sex education and promotes secular, humanistic values. Protest organizers are hoping parents will speak against the program.

Russ Neal, president of Citizens for Family Strength, which he describes as “an ad-hoc group of parents and citizens concerned with the family life curriculum,” said the group may also distribute literature and set up an audio-visual display outside the meeting.

The district would like to expand the curriculum, which has been offered for the last decade to students in grades seven through 12, to elementary school students.

Besides sex education, the curriculum includes classes on drug and alcohol abuse awareness.

“When you look at the scope of the program . . . what it amounts to is a power grab on the part of the state,” Neal said.

Supt. Jerome Thornsley denied that the program is anti-family or promotes immorality. Such charges, he said, are “absolutely false and not what the program has in it.”

Thornsley said he will make final recommendations to the school board it its May 6 meeting.

The meeting will be held in San Juan Capistrano.