District Parents Raise Concerns after LNP Publishes Article

Principal Todd Bowman was surprised to hear there was controversy in Lititz regarding the planned speaking engagement of Pam Stenzel, who is scheduled to address Warwick high school and middle school students about abstinence as part of what the district describes as their “comprehensive sexual education curriculum.” Stenzel spoke to Bowman’s high school students, along with those from two other public schools, at a combined assembly just two weeks ago.

“That was the best assembly we’ve had yet,” Bowman said. “I’d have her come talk every week if it was my choice and we could afford it.”

There was no controversy in Phillipsburg, a town of over 2,000 residents in western Kansas, where, according to Bowman, there were no complaints to the school, either before or after the assembly.

“It’s definitely been positive all the way around,” said Bowman. “I have had no negative comments whatsoever.”

Bowman, the principal of Phillipsburg High School, believes Stenzel’s hour-long October 8 presentation to over 450 middle and high school students in his and a neighboring district was beneficial because she presented information that students need to hear.

“Too many people like it sugar-coated,” he said, citing the need for students to know the consequences of sexual behavior during high school. “Maybe that’s just small-town Kansas,” Bowman said, “we like it given to us straight.”

Controversy over Stenzel’s appearance broke out in the Warwick School District after LancasterOnline published an article last Wednesday at 1:54 p.m. which district officials, and some Warwick parents, consider inflammatory and unnecessarily hasty, since not all Warwick parents had received the email sent by the district that day notifying them of the event before the article was published online.  As a result, some parents first learned of the speaker though the LancasterOnline website or social networking.

The district, which had emailed information and an opt-out form to parents a month in advance of the event, immediately began receiving calls from parents who were both against and in support of the presentation.

Parents took to Facebook and to the Lancaster Online site to express opinions about the article and the speaker. One parent, posting to the LNP article from a Facebook account under the name Scott Musser, questioned “why (Lancaster Newspapers) had to publish it just hours after the district sent the letter to parents email” and why the publication chose to use the word “lightning-rod” to describe Stenzel in the headline, which he wrote, “seems meant to incite controversy.”

Kara Newhouse, who reported the story for Lancaster Newspapers and interacted with those who commented on the post, defended the timing of her article in her reply to Musser’s comments on the site.

“Our goal is to get information out to Lancaster County as quickly as possible. We regularly update stories as more news comes to us. If this were a story with sensitive information about a student, that might warrant waiting till parents were informed, however this is about an outside speaker, so there was no reason not to share it,” Newhouse posted in the article’s comment section.

Barb Rhoda, executive editor at Lancaster Newspapers, was unavailable for comment, according to an LNP editor who answered the phone but refused to comment regarding the story.

Some parents posted to the article’s comment section that they intend to opt-out their student from the assembly. Principal Bowman believes that to be a mistake.

“I think they’d be penalizing their student,” Bowman said, noting that only one student was opted out of his school’s assembly. “And I think they regret it after they heard about how good it was.”

Bowman said students were engaged and responsive during the presentation and although Stenzel sometimes raised her voice, her volume was not unlike other speakers trying to make a point.

When asked what he would tell Warwick parents, Bowman, himself a parent and an educator for over twenty years, said he would urge them to go to hear Stenzel, and to bring their student along.

“If (Warwick) doesn’t want (Stenzel), we’ll take her back here,” he said.

Lynn Rebuck covers education for LititzDailyNews.com. She welcomes your comments by email to [email protected]