Anoka-Hennepin district quietly changes "neutrality policy" test question

Anoka-Hennepin district officials quietly changed the wording of controversial teacher training material.

​Jefferson Fietek, a drama teacher at Anoka Middle School, was supposed to answer six simple questions to prove he'd watched a training presentation put out by the Anoka-Hennepin school district. The test was supposed to be easy. But the way it was written made passing impossible.

The wording of question number 3 cast a very positive light on the district's controversial Sexual Orientation Curriculum Policy, which says staff must remain "neutral" when discussing homosexuality. Fietek refused to answer the question correctly and spoke to City Pages about it last week.

Afterward, Fietek went back into the online test and found something surprising: The original question was gone.

The district's policy -- nicknamed the "no homo promo" -- is the basis of a federal lawsuit filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center against Anoka-Hennepin, claiming that it creates a discriminatory environment for gay students. The key part of the policy reads:

Anoka-Hennepin staff, in the course of their professional duties, shall remain neutral on matters regarding sexual orientation including but not limited to student led discussions.

The SPLC lawyers aren't the only ones with a serious problem with the policy. Teachers like Fietek have been trying to get it changed for some time, saying it ties their hands and prevents them from helping gay teens in crisis.

Question number 3 on the online test, as it originally appeared. [CLICK TO ENLARGE]

​Instead of rewriting it, the district's administrators have chosen to institute new teacher training to "clarify" it. As a part of that training, teachers and staff watched a PowerPoint video called "District Message on Anti-Bullying, Anti-Harassment and Policy Related FAQs." It explained both the neutrality policy and the district bullying policy, and how to administer each. Teachers were then told to pass a quiz on the material with 100 percent accuracy.

But teachers who object to the policy were tripped up by the wording of a true-or-false question that read, "One of the goals of the Sexual Orientation Curriculum Policy is to ensure all of our students feel safe and respected in our classrooms and/or while participating in school activities." The correct answer was clearly supposed to be "true."

But Fietek was incensed.

"This question was inappropriate and was an opinion question," he told City Pages last week.

Fietek and several other teachers who spoke to CP refused to answer correctly and expressed concern that the question could be used as some sort of district statistic, claiming that "100 percent of district teachers say the policy is helpful."

But after the controversy became public, Fietek went back into the test form to read the question again. He found to his surprise that it had been changed.

Today, the question reads:

If and when staff address sexual orientation, it is important that staff do so in a respectful manner that is age appropriate, factual and pertinent to the relevant curriculum.

As it turns out, the dramatically watered-down wording was submitted by a complaining teacher, who is also an advisor for one of the district's Gay Straight Alliance clubs.

"Interesting that instead of just going to the people who actually have the knowledge to help them, we have to go to them," says Fietek of the district. "And they go to it when they've dropped the ball."

He's also mystified by why he never heard an announcement about changing the language of the question.

Julie Blaha, head of the district teacher's union, called a meeting with administrators to talk about the test. She says she wants the district to address why they changed the question at the next teacher development day in October, and to better explain how the results from such training materials will be used in the future.

"Are these pledges? Are they simply checking for understanding?" she says. "Teachers don't want to say, 'We espouse this particular philosophy.' That's the concern."

The meeting between the teacher's union oand the district is today at 9 a.m.

Previous coverage:

• Anoka-Hennepin teacher training test requires affirmation of "neutrality policy"
• Five students suing Anoka-Hennepin schools over gay bullying
• Michele Bachmann responds to Anoka-Hennepin suicides without addressing gay-bullying