LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — Two Las Vegas parents have settled a lawsuit with the Clark County School District over an explicit assignment.
Back in 2022, Candra Evans says her then-15-year-old daughter was a student at the Las Vegas Arts Academy. According to the lawsuit, Evans alleged her daughter was "forced to perform a monologue that contained explicit language" in her theater class, which had been written by another student.
According to the lawsuit, the teacher "helped the other student edit their obscenely violent pornographic monologue knowing that it would be then be provided to another student to read, memorize and perform in front of the class."
Evans brought the issue up at a CCSD board meeting in May 2022. When she began reading the assignment, her microphone was cut off because the assignment "contained profane language."
"If you don't want me to read it to you, what was it like for my 15-year-old daughter to have to memorize pornographic material and memorize it," Evans told the board at the time.
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The lawsuit also claims that the teacher who allowed the assignment "spoke to the student alone against the mother's request that the student be kept away from [the teacher] without another adult present."
Evans' attorneys argued there was no educational value to the assignment.
"It's not related to the class curriculum learning how to perform a monologue, this sexually obscene material and language in the monologue," said attorney Vincent Garrido, who represented the Evans family. "It could have easily been achieved through a monologue that didn't contain that language in there."
However, the school district's attorneys disagreed.
"Even if somebody's asked to perform an offensive script, it advances a theater program's pedagogical interest in teaching actions in at least three ways," said Kara Hendricks, who represented the district. "One, it teaches students how to step outside of their own values and character by forcing them to assume a very foreign character and to recite offensive dialogues. Two, it teaches students to preserve the integrity of the author's work. And three, it measure true acting skill to be able to convincingly portray an offensive part."
Hendricks also stated that parents have a right to choose the school that their child goes to but "that's where their rights stop."
"And so, at that point what happens in the classroom and a specific assignment, the parent does not have a right to step in."
Evans told the board that she didn't want the teacher to be fired. However, she wanted to bring the situation up so it doesn't happen again in the future.
