Bend-La Pine Schools is updating its sex education policy to reflect revised state laws, and in the process sixth-graders will now likely move from an abstinence-only program to classes with limited information about condoms, oral contraceptives and sexually transmitted diseases.
At tonight’s meeting, the school board will conduct a first reading of the revised policy, which has been updated to reflect new state law.
Bill Rhoades, Bend-La Pine Schools’ chief academic officer for middle school education, said the change is minor. The district, he said, has used comprehensive sexuality curriculum for several years except in the case of the sixth grade, which used a Deschutes County Health Department program called Students Today Aren’t Ready for Sex (STARS).
“STARS couldn’t exist as it was anymore so there had to be some component added to fit the new criteria,” Rhoades said. “It promoted abstinence only.”
That program has been replaced with a new one called My Future, My Choice.
The new curriculum focuses on postponing sexual involvement and features 10 lessons. High school students who have been trained will teach the first five lessons of My Future, My Choice, just as they did for the STARS curriculum. Those lessons include discussions about peer and social pressures, the advantages of postponing sex and learning techniques that help students resist the pressure to have sex.
The final five lessons include discussions on the stages of puberty, the risks of sexual activity, and methods of protection like abstinence and contraception.
‘Resistance skills’
Rebeckah Berry, a health educator for the Deschutes County Health Department, oversees the My Future, My Choice curriculum. In the past, every middle school in Deschutes County used the STARS program, Berry said.
She said the new program, which is designed for sixth-graders and has grown from five to 10 lessons, focuses mostly on resistance skills.
“We’ve got three hours of talking about resistance skills and how those can be applied to any sort of negative peer pressure, not just setting sexual limits but also drugs, alcohol and skipping school,” Berry said.
But while the curriculum has been expanded and is considered comprehensive, it will only skim pregnancy and STD prevention.
“What it does is it actually states that abstinence is the only 100 percent effective method out there,” she said. “Throughout all 10 lessons, abstinence is stressed.”
In the 10th lesson, teachers will review how pregnancy occurs, a topic discussed in fifth-grade health classes. Then they will go over types of protection that prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.
“In essence this really introduces the fact that besides abstinence, there are other methods of protection,” Rhoades said.
Berry stressed that the new curriculum doesn’t go into much detail.
“We say some methods such as condoms help prevent STDs and stop the sperm,” she said. “Some prevent pregnancy by changing the hormone levels in a woman’s body. That’s the detail we go into.”
The Redmond School Board has already approved using the My Future, My Choice curriculum. The Bend-La Pine School Board will have a first reading of the policy change and the curriculum at tonight’s meeting, and the Sisters School Board is likely to vote on it in the next month.
Bend-La Pine Schools has a health advisory committee made up of teachers, administrators and community health professionals who meet to discuss health curriculum.
“Districts still have the latitude and are required to have conversations with their stakeholders around what would be appropriate at particular grade levels,” Rhoades said.
The committee has reviewed and recommended the new curriculum. And as before, families can opt out of the sex education program by filling out a form.
“That’s part of what’s explicit in the policy now, are the parents’ opportunities to opt out,” Rhoades said.
Rhoades noted very few parents currently opt out of sex education programs, and the letter being sent to parents allows them to choose which lessons they don’t want their children to attend.
“It will be interesting to see if more parents opt out,” he said.
State law
The change stems from House Bill 2509, which passed through the Oregon Legislature in 2009 and is a revision to a law that’s been on the books since 1993. It requires all school districts to provide “age-appropriate human sexuality education courses in all public elementary and secondary schools as an integral part of the health education curriculum.”
The law further states that the course material must be medically accurate and must provide information about the most effective ways to prevent pregnancy and STDs. Abstinence cannot be taught exclusively.
“It just clarifies district responsibilities, and it also changes the tone of it to a little bit more positive tone,” said Brad Victor, Oregon Department of Education’s sex education specialist.
Victor said comprehensive sexual education has been required by the state since the late 1980s, and the Oregon administrative regulation has been updated through the years, most recently in 2007.
About 10 years ago, Victor put together a document that identifies age-appropriate topics for sex education. He culled the information from various sources, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The topics included in Victor’s list are suggestions.
For children in kindergarten through third grade, for example, topics like personal hygiene and the difference between good and bad touching are considered age-appropriate.
For kids in middle school, age-appropriate topics include the definitions of different types of intercourse and sexually transmitted diseases, as well as discussing limits with partners and an emphasis on sex being just one way to express love.
And for high school students, topics range from access to contraception and disease prevention methods to gender identity and sexual orientation.
So far, Victor hasn’t noticed an uptick in the number of districts seeking help from his office. He said he does about 30 trainings each year and the volume has been the same.
“This just gives people a chance to take a look at what they’re doing,” he said.
Sheila G. Miller can be reached at 541-617-7831 or at smiller@bendbulletin.com.
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