JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The Duval County School Board is going over a district policy change for how sexual education is taught in the classroom, specifically focusing on teaching abstinence from sex.
Florida law makes it the standard for all students to learn abstinence as a standard, which, in the state’s terms, means telling students to wait until marriage for sex. It’s also DCPS’s current standard, but its new policy does not include teaching certain ways to prevent pregnancy.
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“A lot of it is very unnecessary,” said University of North Florida public health professor Elissa Barr after reading through the new policy.
Action News Jax spoke with Barr about DCPS’s new policy compared to the current one. Barr has done national interviews on sex education standards in schools and is a local expert on state and northeast Florida policies.
Part of the new policy removes a section saying education about contraceptives, things like condoms or the birth control bill as a means of preventing pregnancy, will be included in class. This is what part of the current policy says:
“The program will be abstinence based (Abstinence Plus) and will promote sexual abstinence as the expected standard for students. Information and education concerning risks, prevention of pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, and contraceptives with the use of medically accurate materials, will be included.”
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This is the new policy:
“The program will be abstinence based and will promote sexual abstinence as the expected standard for students. Instruction may include but is not limited to information and education concerning risks, prevention of pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections and diseases, known modes of transmission, signs and symptoms, risk factors associated with acquired immune deficiency syndrome and means used to control the spread of acquired immune deficiency syndrome.”
Some health experts like Barr worry the removal of contraceptives and medically accurate materials as a means of abstinence and sex education could put students’ health at risk.
“If we take out medically accurate, that opens the door for all kinds of inaccurate information,” said Barr. “This could really compromise their health, and we may start seeing higher rates of HIV.”
Florida law doesn’t require school districts to teach the use of contraceptives or medically accurate materials, as DCPS’s current policy says. But it does leave it up to the districts to decide whether or not to allow parents to opt their children in or out of sex ed classes.
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Barr says some school board members have proposed the possibility of requiring parents to opt-in to sex education classes, though it’s not yet mentioned in the new policy. But, since Florida law already requires abstinence education as a standard, Barr believes having parents opt-in would be unnecessary.
“It would be like opting into math or English, which is a complete waste of district resources,” said Barr.
Action News Jax reached out to the school district to ask when this new policy could go before the board again or be voted on by school board members. We also asked about whether or not an opt-in or opt-out option will be added or made available. Right now, we’re still waiting for a response.
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