MERTON - School officials apologized to parents of eighth-graders at Merton Intermediate School who were upset upon learning of a music video that was shown to students in a language arts class that had not been approved in advance.

The eighth-grade language arts staff showed students a music video of Christina Aguilera's song "Beautiful."

Students were doing a quiz to analyze two universal themes in the video and were asked to be prepared to debate/defend their position, according to an email sent to Lake Country Now by Merton School District Superintendent Ronald Russ.

The video contained "images of homosexuality and gender/sexual identity struggles." Parents had not been notified ahead of time to preview or opt their child out of the activity, which is part of the school's Human Growth and Development curriculum.

The video includes scenes of individuals standing alone clad in undergarments in a bedroom, and closeups of men kissing each other.

"That curriculum, parents can opt in or out based on family values," Russ said. "The content was also not cleared by an administrator as well, which is protocol given questionable content."

Russ apologized for the incident in a letter to eighth-grade parents, and acknowledged the decision not to inform parents was wrong.

"As a district, we will emphasize to our staff that all questionable instructional materials be brought forward for approval prior to use in our classrooms and also gain prior parental approval," Russ said. "Our staff takes great pride in providing quality, engaging, and meaningful lessons in a variety of ways. We will continue to engage and educate our students in a way that represents our community values."

Merton School Board President Dean Dobbertin said he was informed of the incident late Wednesday night. The teachers met with administrators on Thursday morning, and the school board has not been involved in the process.

"There's so many good pieces of material out there for dealing with this subject. This was just a very, very poor choice of material to choose," Dobbertin said. "It's sad."

Russ agreed.

"Given the educational objective, there could have been many other videos that could have been used to get the same point across without getting into the HGD (human growth and development) topics which parents did not know about," Russ said. "We are very sorry that this happened and have taken steps to ensure it is avoided in the future as well."

Russ also said the teachers that were involved were not recommended for termination.