PARENTS FILE CLAIM OVER SCHOOL'S EXPLICIT SURVEY.

Byline: Karen Maeshiro Staff Writer

PALMDALE - Seven Mesquite School parents whose children were given a controversial survey that asked questions of a sexual nature have filed a claim against the Palmdale School District.

The survey had asked youngsters if they thought about having sex, if they thought about ``touching other people's private parts'' and if they didn't trust people because they might want sex.

``Hopefully they will never do something like this again. We needed to protect our children's rights the best way we could.'' said parent Tammany Fields, whose 10-year-old son was given the survey.

The school board is scheduled to consider the parents' claim at its closed-session meeting today. The claim filed May 30 by the parents of four children charges the survey was a violation of state and federal constitutional rights.

``It wasn't unexpected. The board will determine what they will do with it,'' Superintendent Nancy Smith said Monday.

``Parents have the statutory right to know, in advance, whether their children will be given sex education at a school, and if they choose, in their sole discretion, to exempt their children from such education. By robbing the claimants of the right to control their children's upbringing, the district simultaneously robbed the students of their innocence and the claimants of their status as parents,'' the claim said.

Prompted by parents' complaints, the district in January halted the survey that was administered to 13 third- and fifth-graders by a mental health therapist for her doctoral degree.

The district investigated the circumstances around the survey and adopted new policies to prevent its recurrence, including formation of a committee of parents and administrators to review requests to survey pupils.

At the time the survey was stopped, district officials said the director of psychological services had reviewed the questions prior to the survey and told the therapist to take out about a half-dozen questions he deemed inappropriate, but that this was not done.

Board president Sheldon Epstein said earlier that the investigation found there was not any inappropriate intent on the part of the therapist and that there had been a lack of communication between her and district personnel.

``(T)he district has deprived the claimants of significant constitutional rights of privacy, equal protection and due process and had significantly impaired the claimants' ability to control and monitor the sexual education and development of the students,'' the claim said.

Besides the sexually oriented questions, the survey also asked if the youngsters had bad dreams or nightmares, if they felt lonely or angry, or if ``scary ideas or pictures just pop into my head.''