Wrangell’s Public School Board started in earnest a conversation on the nature and tone of sexual education for students at its Monday evening meeting.
The board reviewed on first reading a draft policy on family life and sex education, with changes made in light of House Bill 156 passed by the Alaska Legislature in June. It became law without Gov. Bill Walker’s signature on October 26. The bill requires that those teaching on the subjects of sex health, reproduction, and human sexuality in public schools be credentialed and approved by individual districts’ school boards. It also requires that all materials and curricula be approved by those boards and available for public review before implementation.
The high school is setting up a new curriculum for a semester-long health class under the tutelage of Jack Carney. The course will be aimed at incoming freshmen, with daily class periods going over the basics of health and personal wellness. This largely focuses on fitness and nutrition, but also has a sexual health component.
Part of the class will include a week-long presentation by Matt and Jenifer Gerald, who for the past decade have presented “Let’s Talk Healthy Relationships,” an Anchorage-based curriculum. The course is set up differently for specific age groups: sixth graders receiving a 55-minute talk on puberty, seventh and eighth grade students each receive about three hours’ instruction over four days, and high school students each year receive just over four hours of instruction during a five-day timeframe.
The subject matter varies depending on the course, and runs through a number of risks and statistics about sexual activity, while emphasizing the benefits of abstinence. Much of the course also focuses on healthy relationships, cultural influences and personal boundaries.
“Each one is age-appropriate,” Matt Gerald explained. “We don’t just say ‘don’t have sex.’ We talk about goals,” in the context of how decisions impact life goals over time.
“Everything’s activity-oriented,” he went on. To elucidate, Jenifer Gerald walked audience members through the “Skittle exercise,” where each person received a piece of the fruit-flavored candy. Those who picked green ones were to hold on to theirs, while the rest were encouraged to trade their candies with as many people in the room as possible within a given timeframe. After the trading had concluded, participants were asked to eat their Skittle, which by that time had been well-handled. Many ended up in the garbage.
“Why wouldn’t you want to eat your Skittle?” Jenifer Gerald asked, likening each trade to a sexual encounter. Untraded, the green candies represented abstinence. “That’s just one of the openers we try to do, to lighten the mood.”
Parents, teachers and other community members were given some opportunity to weigh in on the subject. A couple expressed the opinion the Geralds’ presentation put too much emphasis on abstinence, a criticism which was also directed at the school district’s prospective policy wording. Parent Jacquie DeMontigny recommended dropping a sentence emphasizing that students be encouraged to remain abstinent “and to conceptualize sexual behavior in the ethical and moral context of marriage.”
“It’s a value-based curriculum,” she noted. DeMontigny added she felt strongly that the school should offer a more technically-rooted course alongside the values-based one.
Matt Gerald noted their presentation does touch on the topic of condoms and other contraceptives.
“We don’t elaborate a ton on them,” he explained. “The fact of the matter is they’re not 100 percent.”
He pointed to a Center for Disease Control statement which concluded abstinence was among “the most reliable ways to avoid transmission of STDs,” along with long-term mutual monogamy with uninfected persons. On its site, the CDC adds the caveat that “many infected persons may be unaware of their infection because STDs often are asymptomatic and unrecognized.”
Gerald then likened condoms to seat belts, in that they can be protective to an extent, but not completely. Coincidentally, later on in the meeting during their annual insurance report, board members were informed Wrangell students were found to consistently travel on school district trips without the use of seat belts, which posed a liability in addition to the inherent safety risks.
Addressing a potentially imbalanced curriculum, one solution suggested was to have a state Public Health Nurse deliver a comprehensive sexual education course, as has been done in past years. The option appeared to board members to be off the table, as budget cuts have led to the unstaffing of Wrangell’s Public Health Center earlier this year.
Teacher Heather Howe, who presented past years’ health education courses, pointed out the office is still functional, with staff from Petersburg and other neighboring communities continuing the PHC’s local services.
“They’re very willing to work with us,” Howe said.
Board president Georgianna Buhler commented that
she had a problem with someone from another community, without the rapport with students a local might have, to come in and teach such a sensitive subject.
Some parents were against that idea entirely. Heidi Armstrong cited a negative experience one of her children had with the public nurse’s presentation in the spring, which featured a practical display on proper condom usage. It had been an embarrassing incident for the student, which Armstrong said had happened because she had not received notification of the class beforehand. Had she known, Armstrong said, permission would not have been given.
“Unfortunately, I never got the letter,” she said.
The discussion eventually became heated, prompting the school board to move on to other topics. It passed the draft policy for first reading, which will appear again for a second and final reading – and further discussion – at the next meeting on December 19.
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