Department has been stonewalling House Oversight Committee request for info about planned changes to health curriculum; lawmaker says the department is attempting to subvert parental rights, indoctrinate students with gender ideology

The Michigan House Oversight Committee on Tuesday, Nov. 4 authorized the use of subpoena power to compel the state Department of Education to turn over material it has been withholding from the committee.

The motion was made by state Rep. Luke Meerman, who raised concerns about planned changes to mandatory health curriculum that he says are an attempt to indoctrinate students with gender ideology and subvert parental rights.

The committee is seeking to gather internal communications, including meeting minutes and records of discussions between MDE officials and outside organizations regarding the department’s proposed updates to sex education standards, but the department claimed it would take months to gather that information, which prompted the committee to stop asking and legally force the department to comply.

At issue: parents have the right under current law to exempt their children from sex ed if they prefer those lessons be taught at home instead of by a government school. However, the new framework would subvert parental rights by including topics on gender identity and sexual interests in the mandatory section of required health classes, along with other non-health topics such as green energy.

“Parents are concerned that the department is intentionally subverting parental oversight of sensitive topics related to reproductive health by ramming gender identity and sexual orientation into the mandatory segment of the health education curriculum,” said Meerman, R-Coopersville. “Health education must be about health, teaching about nutrition, hygiene, and the dangers of drugs and alcohol, not topics related to identity and sexual orientation.”

The department last updated health curriculum in 2007; it is now rushing to update health education guidelines that it gives to all school districts while operating under an interim superintendent.

“Health class should focus exclusively on educating students how to build lifelong healthy habits and giving them information such as diet and the connection between dental health and heart disease. It is not the place to advance other agendas,” Meerman said. “We demand to know more about how the curriculum was developed and whether the department was influenced by outside political interests. For some reason, the department decided they cannot share that information, which should be easy to gather, before these changes are set to go into place. So we are taking action to force them to provide the info.”

The subpoena has since been issued, and the department accepted service of the subpoena. The deadline to comply is Tuesday, Dec. 2.