District Sued for Canceling Session About Gays in School : Courts: Teachers challenge decision by president of West Covina school board, who said workshop might seem to promote homosexuality. Sex education curriculum has also been in dispute.

The West Covina teachers union filed suit against the school district Tuesday challenging a decision to cancel a teachers’ workshop on homosexuals in schools.

The suit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court against the West Covina Unified School District, says the cancellation violated teachers’ 1st Amendment right to free speech.

“We had a right, as adults, to attend this workshop,” said Kim Breen, president of the West Covina Unified Teachers Union. “They (the school board) simply censored it.”

The workshop on how teachers can help gay and lesbian students was originally scheduled for Oct. 17 by the West Covina district as part of an all-day conference offering 62 workshops for teachers from 10 area school districts.

Mike Spence, president of the school board, who took responsibility for canceling the workshop, said he thought the title of the workshop, “Out of the Closet and Into the Classroom,” sounded as if the session would promote homosexuality.

“Teen-agers are confused about a lot of things, and I think it’s wrong to encourage sexual behavior among adolescents,” Spence said. “We have school counselors if students need help.”

Breen, who said a gay former student of hers recently attempted suicide, said that students often turn to their teachers with questions about sexuality, and that teachers need more information and strategies for helping students.

“This is not some bizarre topic,” she said. “How many lives will it take for the members of the school board to realize that this is a serious issue?”

A 1989 report by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services estimated that gay and lesbian youths are two to three times more likely to attempt suicide than are heterosexual teen-agers and that gay and lesbian teen-agers account for about 30% of all youth suicides.

Some teachers already had been at odds with the district over a memo last year concerning sex education.

Breen said she and other district teachers received a letter instructing them not to teach sex education, but district officials said the only memo that was sent out asked teachers to temporarily stop teaching about sexually transmitted diseases, including AIDS.

Martha Evans, assistant superintendent of the West Covina Unified School District, said she sent a memo last May asking teachers to postpone instruction on sexually transmitted diseases, and that was all.

“I did not write a letter telling them to stop teaching sex ed classes,” Evans said. “Perhaps they interpreted the memo incorrectly, but they have not come forward to me.”

“I haven’t taught one sex ed class this year because of the letter,” said Marilyn McQuown, an eighth-grade science teacher at Edgewood Middle School.

Breen, who also teaches science at Edgewood Middle School, said that one of her 13-year-old students recently gave birth to a baby boy and that four other students are pregnant at the West Covina school. Because of the letter, she said, she hasn’t taught sex education this year.

“They (the district) are out of touch with reality,” Breen said. “We have children raising children and having unprotected sex. These are real problems.”

Matt Bugbee, chairman of the science department at West Covina High School, said he never received a letter specifically prohibiting sex education but said there was some confusion over the memo.

“The memo implied that it might be best to postpone sex ed,” Bugbee said. “I left it up to the teachers to decide, and as far as I know, some are teaching it and some are not.”

Evans and Spence both told The Times that they know nothing about a letter specifically banning sex education instruction and that there is no record of it in their files. McQuown and Breen said they threw their copies away.

The May memo states that instruction on sexually transmitted diseases should be postponed pending revisions by the Communicable Disease Advisory Committee. The committee, a group of teachers, parents and school administrators formed by the district in the late 1980s, reviewed the course content over the summer. Such committees are standard practice for school districts.

The committee recommended a program stressing abstinence as the best protection against sexually transmitted diseases.