The school board in Saugatuck, Mich., this week voted against a motion that would have allowed a video on coming out to be part of the eighth-grade sex education curriculum.
The video was intended to tie in with a class lesson on bullying and harassment, but the majority of board members said other than one section of the video, it lacked in the intended subject matter.
The motion was voted down 5-2.
“I believe the video does very little in terms of the harassment and bullying component,” school board President Mike VanLoon said. “It really is geared more toward the coming out aspect of it, so if we’re trying to address the harassment and bullying component, there’s very little in the video that does that.”
Watch a clip from the video here:
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The video “would have allowed students to understand what some of their classmates might feel going to a public school,” said Saugatuck Middle and High School Principal Tim Travis who was in support of adding the video.
