The Clovis Unified School District has been sued in Fresno Superior Court for failing to administer a qualified sex education programs as required by the state.
Apparently the district is not alone in its behavior.
“Many California students are not receiving the sex education which they deserve and which is required by law,” according to a November 2011 report by the University of California, San Francisco. The university sent surveys to 100 school districts and heard back from 33 and found that many did not cover HIV/AIDS prevention and sex education subjects which are required by the state.
More than a third of the school districts reported that they required no training for sex education teachers and a significant number had policies that did not comply with the California Education Code. One in five districts said birth control got a mention, but their focus was on abstinence. Twenty percent admitted they improperly required permission slips from parents to teach kids about HIV/AIDS prevention.
And 16% reported that they teach “condoms are not an effective means of preventing pregnancies and STDs/HIV.” That is a factually incorrect statement.
California passed a law, SB 71, in 2003 requiring that sex education in public schools be comprehensive and medically accurate but, until now, has never seen its provisions invoked in a court action. That changed this week when the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, on behalf of two parents, the California District of the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Gay-Straight Alliance Network, filed suit it Fresno Superior Court challenging the Clovis curriculum.
The lawsuit alleges that Clovis Unified, which serves 39,000 students in 40 schools, teaches an abstinence-only curriculum with misinformation about disease and birth control, and is using a textbook that fails to meet standards of the 2003 law.
Clovis Unified denies the accusations, saying in a statement that its curriculum “complies with California’s content standards while reflecting the expectations of our community.”
The school district uses a program called Teen Choices, a curriculum put together by Mac Shaw, a former Fowler City Council member and former minister at Fowler Presbyterian Church. He originally wrote the curriculum in the late ‘90s and says he updated it a few years ago. Although the textbook used does not mention condoms, district officials say other program shortcomings have been fixed in recent years.
Aubree Smith—a plaintiff, registered nurse, and parent of a 17-year-old girl who is a student in the district—said that there have been changes in the program since threats of a lawsuit were first raised about three years. Teens are no longer pressed to sign abstinence pledges, Smith said, and the district removed statements from teaching materials that said if students don’t practice abstinence, they will get STD’s that will kill their babies.
–Ken Broder
To Learn More:
Clovis Unified District Sued over Abstinence-Only Sex Education (by Teresa Watanabe, Los Angeles Times)
Calif. School District Sued over Sex Ed Program (by John S. Marshall, Associated Press)
Parents and Doctors Sue Clovis Unified School District over Sex Education Lawsuit Is the First of Its Kind in California (American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California)
Parents Criticize Clovis Unified Sex Education (by Barbara Anderson, Fresno Bee)
Clovis Unified Sued for Giving Inadequate Sexual Education (by Susan Frey, EdSource)
Uneven Progress: Sex Education in California Public Schools (Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health) (pdf)