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Category: Abstinence Discrimination

Published: 27 September 2016

Letter to the Editor of the Washington Times re Merit Pay Editorial (not published) 

I am writing in response to the Merit Pay editorial of September 9.  Although merit pay in itself is not a bad idea, the ends used to accomplish this, and many other of Mayor Fenty’s and Ms. Rhee’s goals do no justify the means.  Mayor Fenty and Ms Rhee have been vindictive and conniving in many of their dealings with the District’s adults and children.  Compassion, character and conscience are essential characteristics of a true leader.  A true leader is transparent, and truly works for the public good.

There are many questions that need to be asked by the Times and other media about Ms. Rhee.  Why did two nonprofits close to Rhee hire several teachers for $1,000 a week to lobby their colleagues to accept merit pay?   Does Ms. Rhee promote an “alternative values” agenda that favors regulations that legitimize same sex relationships, while at the same time discriminate against programs that promote traditional values? Why was ULTRA Teen Choice kicked out of DC public schools without cause, with reasons being fabricated afterward?  Why have health standards been passed that specify the discussion of gender identity and sexual orientation in middle school in spite of a lack of parental support for these standards?   Why was a before school  community prayer meeting that was being organized by Eastern Senior High School alumni cancelled after the Chancellor’s office learned about it and claimed that it would violate separation of church and state?  Why have special education programs been gutted, with the Chancellor being close to being held in contempt of court?  Why have highly qualified veteran teachers, including popular Wilson High School teacher Dr. Art Siebens, been removed.?  Why did Ms. Rhee first meet with   the Friends of Ludlow-Taylor Elementary school on Capitol Hill, but not with the school’s PTA?

Ms. Rhee has repeatedly shown disrespect, or even contempt for DC Public school parents, teachers, and children.  I personally know of four teachers at Eastern Senior High School who retired just this past school year. One did not bother to finish the school year. After 25 years of teaching, he was fed up with unruly classrooms and lack of support from the school administration. Another teacher worked heroically to help 10th grade students who were reading at fifth grade level. She was subjected to repeated "evaluations", and has also retired. Another teacher had a stroke and recovered. She too had served students for over 25 years, and has also retired.  Although Ms. Rhee lacks an education plan for Washington, DC, there are clear agendas that she is pushing.  One is to create acceptance of homosexual lifestyles throughout the school system.  This is connected to the effort to block, remove or push out teachers, service providers, or anyone else that promotes traditional values, or may come from a faith-based perspective, or may be less inclined to accept such changes:  thus, the cancellation of the prayer meeting at Eastern.

True school reform can never come through unscrupulous means, and cannot come without the support of the community, and without upholding the traditional values that the great majority of the community cherish.  Children do not grow up in a vacuum.  The real battleground is to strengthen families and marriages by reducing sex outside of marriage and increasing the number of children who grow up in stable, two parent families.  Ms. Rhee’s policies are antagonistic to the strengthening of traditional families and strong community involvement from both faith based and other community organizations.  As such they can never bring true, long lasting reform.

Details

Category: Abstinence Discrimination

Published: 27 September 2016

Letter to the Editor as printed in the Washington Times, October 2, 2008

View at WashingtonTimes.com

Adam Tenner, in his letter responding to your editorial "Sex ed in D.C.," makes it sound as if his organization, Metro TeenAIDS, is an impartial provider of services for the prevention of HIV/AIDS and teen pregnancy that always keeps parents informed about what is being taught in its programs.

However, it should be noted that Mr. Tenner, as well as Metro TeenAIDS policy manager Jeremy Ogusky, were members of the committee that drafted the District's new health standards. Most parents don't know that the new health standards specify that in sixth grade, students will learn "that people, regardless of biological sex, gender, ability, sexual orientation, gender identity and culture, have sexual feeling and the need for love, affection and physical intimacy." In eighth grade, they will learn to "*efine sexual orientation, using correct terminology, and explain that as people grow and develop, they may begin to feel romantically and/or sexually attracted to people of a different gender and/or to people of the same gender."

Mr. Ogusky wrote in a March 2007 e-mail sent to local nonprofit organizations: "If in the future, the school board is lobbied by opponents of the new health ed standards, ULTRA Teen Choice will likely be one of them. This is a good opportunity to neutralize them now." Later in 2007, ULTRA Teen Choice was told by D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee, without cause, to stop operations in D.C. public schools; reasons were fabricated afterward.

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the great majority of textbooks used in "comprehensive" sex education refer to contraceptive use nine times for every one mention of abstinence, rather than emphasizing the importance of the physical, intellectual, emotional, social and moral reasons for waiting to have sex until marriage or a committed lifetime relationship.

As your editorial states, parents should be the ones to decide when, if and how to discuss gender identity, sexual orientation and contraceptive use.

RICHARD URBAN Co-founder

ULTRA Teen Choice

Washington

Details

Category: Abstinence Discrimination

Published: 27 September 2016

Letter to the Editor as Printed in the Washington Times on 8/18/08 LETTER TO EDITOR: D.C. on the wrong track

The Tuesday Aug. 12 Commentary column "AIDS amnesia in America" by Susan Blumenthal and Melissa Shive highlights important statistics about the AIDS epidemic in the District as well as the need for more prevention education. Yet, although they offer no prevention plan, it is clear where they are coming from: Abstinence programs are "ineffective"; prevention programs must be "evidence based," which is code language for "Programs that directive promote abstinence need not apply."

The District is a prime example of what has gone very wrong when it comes to preventing HIV/AIDS in the United States.

Programs that encourage and support youths in their decision to abstain from sex (22 percent more high school youth in the city are abstaining from sex than 14 years ago) have been evicted from D.C. public schools by Mayor Adrian M. Fenty and schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee. Programs that promote two-parent families and sexual abstinence are seen as a threat by those who promote the normalization of same-sex relationships. I was told by Richard Nyankori and Chad Ferguson in Miss Rhee's office that my opposition to now approved health standards that specify teaching about gender identity and sexual orientation beginning in sixth grade meant that our program would not be welcome in D.C. Public Schools. This was after ULTRA Teen Choice was told in November to cease operations in D.C. Public Schools.

In 2007, D.C. Council members David A. Catania and Mary M. Cheh promoted a bill that mandates that all 11-year-old girls attending D.C. public schools receive a three-shot vaccine regimine for human papilloma virus unless their parents opt out. Yet Mr. Catania had no interest in meeting youth from the ULTRA Teen Choice program who wanted to talk about sexual abstinence.

The Board of Education recently proposed draconian new Home School Regulations that would have given D.C. officials the right to enter the homes of parents who where home-schooling and observe the instruction of their children. If "the OSSE determines... that a student is not receiving regular instruction that meets the standards of this chapter and as established by the OSSE," then the parent could be required to send their child to public school. It is entirely plausible that if they were deemed not to be following the D.C. standards (such as not teaching about gender identity and sexual orientation) their children would have to be sent back to public schools. Fortunately, these provisions were removed after the almost unanimous opposition of scores of home-schooling parents who attended a hearing in March. We must ask why these regulations were proposed in the first place. Could it have something to do with the fact that those who home-school often have strong moral and religious convictions and would be more likely to oppose the normalization of same-sex relationships?

I was asked by Mr. Nyankori what our organizations´ policy is on gay rights, implying that if you are not emphatically pro-gay, you are not welcome in D.C. public schools.

No effective HIV/AIDS prevention strategy can be devised as long as D.C. politicians and school officials continue to push pro-gay policies instead of policies that look at what is best for all D.C. children and families.

RICHARD URBAN

Urban Life Training & Reality Assessment (ULTRA)

Teen Choice

Washington

Read Letter to Editor at Washington Times.com

Details

Category: Abstinence Discrimination

Published: 27 September 2016

Mayor Fenty Plays Hardball With Youth Programs

ULTRA Teen Choice has received a letter from both Chancellor Michelle Rhee and Mayor Fenty confirming that we have been banned from DC Public Schools, where we had been providing services to the DC Public Schools for some 10 years at little or no cost to the school system.  On July 28^th, Mayor Fenty played hardball with another youth program, the Washington East of the River Academy, founded by Council member Marion Barry.

The question arises if the Mayor is serving the best interests of the citizens and youth of Washington, DC, or if there are other agendas that the Mayor is promoting.  ULTRA Teen Choice, which had previously operated with the approval of DC Public School officials was deemed to not comply with Chancellor Rhee’s’ agenda of promoting “diversity”.  Rhee administration officials Richard Nyankori and Chad Ferguson told me that since I opposed the standards that introduced discussion of gender identity and sexual orientation beginning in 6^th grade, that our program would not be approved.  They said that if I continued to circulate a petition promoting the teaching of sexual abstinence and not talking about gender identity and sexual orientation issues starting in middle school, that I could go ahead, but there would be the consequence of being blocked form working in DC public schools. 

Michelle Rhee confirmed that policy in letters that she sent to me.  After seemingly relenting to allow the program to continue, Rhee then said that the rules had not been followed, although the rules were changed after our meeting with Richard Nyankori, and the letter that Ms. Rhee sent incorrectly stated the facts of the case.  (see ultrateen choice.org for the letter and our response).

With the Washington East of the River Academy, after Councilmember Barry held a press conference complaining about thousand of summer youth employees not getting paid correctly, then the Mayor moved to shut down the program on Thursday, July 24^th.  Students were sent a letter to come to the DC Armory on Friday, July 25^th.  When that did not produce the desired results of having most of the youth sign up for other sites, then the Mayor’s office moved to evict the program from PR Harris School in Southeast.  The director was threatened with arrest if she did not vacate.

The actions of the Mayor are clearly vindictive.  If there are issues with any site, then you would discus those issues and see if they can be worked out.  ULTRA Teen Choice requested a meeting with the mayor, and we never got any meting with him or even any staff person.  The actions at Washington East of the River Academy indicate a similar mode of operation; if you don’t follow my agenda, you are out. 

The mayor’s policy seems to be:  carry out the agenda first, and make up reasons later.  The mayor’s process for choosing the school chancellor certainly was not open and transparent.  The proposal to eliminate review of the school budget is another example of lack of accountability and transparency.  In the case of ULTRA Teen Choice, we were informed by the Chancellor’s office that there is a moratorium on outside health providers, yet that is not true.  In the case of East of the River Academy, when youth did not sign up at Friday’s meeting at the Armory, the mayor moved to shut down the site, even though the site itself is not funded by the Department of Employment Services.  The mayor’s policy seems to be:  ‘If one tactic of obstruction does not work, let’s come up with another one.’

We need to wake up to the fact that we have a Mayor that is willing to put special interests and agendas ahead of the welfare of the youth and adults of Washington, DC