Dana Parisi and her son stood before the Carroll County Board of Education on Wednesday. As Parisi spoke, her son held a taped, worn copy of Tom Parr’s “The Family Book.”

“There are lots of different families that exist and they all have equal value,” Parisi said in her public testimony. “These books are recognizing the reality … for young kids in a way that is simple and straightforward.”

Parr’s book, as well as Mary Hoffman’s “The Great Big Book of Families,” were both recommended by the school board’s Family Life Advisory Committee to be excluded from Carroll County Public Schools’ prekindergarten and kindergarten curriculum during the committee’s February meeting. Both books describe different family structures, with images of families with same-sex parents, adopted children and single parents.

The Carroll Board of Education voted, 3-1, on Wednesday night to delay a final decision on whether to keep the two books in the curriculum until the school board’s July meeting.

The Family Life Advisory Committee, which has about 25 members, is focused on editing the state’s indicators to meet “community standards for age-appropriate instruction” on human sexuality, according to school board member and committee liaison Donna Sivigny. She was not at Wednesday’s meeting because of a work emergency, according to board President Marsha Herbert.

At Wednesday’s meeting, board member Steve Whisler recommended holding five total items for further discussion at July’s meeting: the two books from prekindergarten and kindergarten curriculum, as well as “Sometimes I’m Bombaloo,” by Rachel Vail, a book from the elementary health education curriculum, and the movies “Jaws” and “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” from the high school English and language arts curricula. Whisler said all included violent imagery and some included nudity.

Only Herbert and Whisler voted in favor of that motion, so it failed.

Herbert said while she understood “time is of the essence,” she wanted to hold the two books in question for further review until Sivigny is in attendance in July.

“I think it’s respect and courtesy for her to be here next month and give her reasons for or for not what she feels,” Herbert said. “I think it’s very important that everyone has a say in this.”

Board member Patricia Dorsey then suggested a vote on all textbook and instructional material recommendations by the Family Life Advisory Committee, except for the two books in the prekindergarten and kindergarten curriculum. Dorsey’s amendment passed, 3-1, with board Vice President Tara Battaglia in dissent.

While Dorsey pushed to hold the two books for further discussion, she also expressed her support for their inclusion in curricula during Wednesday’s meeting.

“I’ve reviewed both of the books that are in question here; I feel that they’re both appropriate,” Dorsey said. “I think they point out more how families are alike than how they’re different.”

Whisler advocated against the inclusion of the two books in schools, saying it is not the board’s “responsibility to break that role of a parent.”

“It is really the best procedure in my opinion, to keep it as broad and generic as possible, to stay away from controversial subjects and to let parents be the ones that talk about these different family structures,” Whisler said. “The issue here is not sacrificing the innocence of a child, not putting in front of a child that young so that they explore the notion or the concept of what is outside their norm.”

But Battaglia pushed back, saying there was “nothing wrong with talking about families that have two moms and two dads,” and that she found it “extremely offensive to try to refer to someone else’s family as not traditional.”

Chloe Kang, student member of the board, described her own struggles with feeling affirmed as an Asian student. It is important for kids to be represented in order to be affirmed, Kang said, and it is especially important for stigmatized communities such as the LGBTQ+ community to know that affirmation.

“It’s important for these students to realize that we are affirming them, that their family does not have to be broad and generic,” Kang said. “It can just be a family.”

In October 2019, the Maryland State Board of Education adopted the 51-page Comprehensive Health Education Framework, which describes concepts student learn at each grade level. The framework includes guidelines for health education, including instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity taught in an age-appropriate manner to students from preschool through 12th grade. Maryland parents can opt their children out of lessons if they’re in fourth grade or higher, according to the framework.

Parents of students enrolled in a Carroll County public elementary, middle or high school can choose to enroll their children in the standard state curriculum, enroll their children in the edited county version, or opt out entirely from family life and sexual education lessons.

To Parisi, who has two sons in Carroll County public schools, “this isn’t about a topic, it’s about a family.” The conversation about the books is being “lumped in with a much larger conversation about human sexuality,” Parisi added.

“We’re injecting adult concepts into a book with stick figures and people with purple hair and fish and things that kids aren’t coming out of this book with,” Parisi said. “Showing all the types of families makes our community richer, not lesser.”

The board is scheduled to discuss the inclusion of the books in the county’s prekindergarten and kindergarten curriculum July 10. The meeting will start at 5 p.m. at 125 N. Court St. in Westminster.