Follow-Up on “We Are Family” Video in S.C. Public Schools
By: Vicki Simons, Education Reporter

The “We Are Family” video–-which conservatives warned was geared to promote the homosexual agenda–-was scheduled to be shown in “61,000 public and private schools across the country” on March 11. Following an inquiry, the State (South Carolina) Department of Education (SDE) responded it was unable to provide information regarding which districts received and/or showed the video. Therefore, a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request was sent to a random sample (fourteen out of 85) of South Carolina school districts, which were selected to capture a range of population and financial demographics.

Some districts were very helpful and provided a lot of information, whereas, others were curt and refused to supply any information claiming “research and answer[ing] questions” does not fall under FOIA requirements.
 
To date, eleven responses have been received. One response includes a copy of an SDE email warning districts of the video’s potential controversy and a copy of the marketing letter received from the We Are Family Foundation. You will be very interested in the approach the SDE took in describing groups who were known to be opposed to the video and responses from the random districts of which information was requested.

If you are unfamiliar with the “We Are Family” video, you can read this article from SCPIE's April Newsletter for more information.

School District	View Response
Aiken*
Barnwell 19	NA
Charleston
Chester
Dillon 3	NA
Florence 4
Greenville
Horry
Kershaw
Lexington 4	NA
Orangeburg 3
Richland 1
Spartanburg 3
Sumter 17

* includes State Department of Education E-mail and a copy of the letter sent to schools with the “We Are Family” video.

Responses are in Adobe Acrobat format.
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