Simmering sex-ed battle heats up
Seniors at Rancho Cotate High School in Rohnert Park listen to a "Free to Be" presentation on sexual abstinence in March 2005.
PD FILEPublished: Sunday, June 7, 2009 at 2:38 p.m.
Last Modified: Monday, June 8, 2009 at 9:07 a.m.
A battle over sex education is under way in Sonoma County, pitting a longtime abstinence-only group against California Department of Education officials who say the group breaks state law when it teaches in the classroom.
Among the players in the unfolding debate are the ACLU of Northern California, the California Department of Education, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and Free to Be, a Sonoma County group that has been promoting abstinence until marriage for 17 years.
Caught in the middle are schools and districts that have hosted Free to Be speakers, including teens, to talk to students about the benefits of abstaining from sex until they are married.
“The law specifically requires that all elements of sex education be balanced and accurate,” said Phyllida Burlingame, sex education policy director for the ACLU of Northern California, which has worked for months to keep Free to Be from giving presentations in public schools.
“Students (need to) receive a consistent message that is based on science, that includes accurate, effective information,” she said.
Free to Be was established in 1992 in association with Catholic Charities as an abstinence-until-marriage outreach program relying heavily on teen presenters. Free to Be ended the affiliation with Catholic Charities approximately 18 months ago, said executive director and founder Sue Bisbee.
As far back as 2000, Free to Be has received annual federal funding for its abstinence program, which helps train teen speakers to spread the word about waiting until marriage before having sex, as well as living drug free and making what it describes as “healthy choices.”
In 2007, the group received approximately $540,000 in federal funding from the Community-Based Abstinence Education Program under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, according to federal tax forms filled out by the nonprofit.
To receive that money, groups must abide by federal guidelines that include teaching “that a mutually faithful monogamous relationship in the context of marriage is the expected standard of human sexual activity . . . that sexual activity outside of the context of marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects . . . that bearing children out-of-wedlock is likely to have harmful consequences for the child, the child’s parents, and society.”
“Those guidelines are in direct conflict with California education code,” said Sharla Smith, HIV/STD prevention education consultant for the Department of Education.
“California never took the federal abstinence-only-until-marriage money and certain groups did and Free to Be is one of them. They can do that education — they can’t do that education in California’s public schools.”
Not so, said Bisbee.
“What the department of education seems to be saying is that anyone who goes in has to thoroughly cover all issues, but that is not what the ed code says,” she said. “Public Health or Planned Parenthood goes in and does the contraception piece, United Against Sexual Assault goes in and does the sexual violence piece. There are many options for them. . . . We are a piece of the pie that teens need to hear.”
In the West Sonoma County Union High School District, both El Molino and Analy high schools have hosted Free to Be speakers.
Superintendent Keller McDonald said Free to Be’s presentation has never represented sex education in total, but merely an option or perspective for students to consider among others, including guest speakers from West County Health Centers and corporate hospitals.
“We invited (Free to Be) as a guest speaker to provide a viewpoint, but not the whole curriculum,” he said. “We look at it as one side of a complex issue.
“I’m really uncomfortable having one organization dictate to us that we can’t invite another organization into a school,” he said. “The determination of that is the responsibility of each individual school district.”
Sex education varies from school to school, but generally begins in fifth grade with discussion of the definition of sexually transmitted diseases, according to the Health Education Content Standards for California public schools.
In seventh and eighth grade, the curriculum includes expanded instruction including “the effectiveness of abstention in preventing HIV, other STDs and unwanted pregancy.”
In high schools, the state code outlines curriculum that includes “identify why abstinence is the most effective method for the prevention of HIV, other STDs and pregnancy.”
Alice Jaffe, who last week graduated from El Molino and who volunteers at a teen clinic, said the Free to Be presentation she heard as a freshman confused beliefs with facts.
“It’s causing problems because kids are being confused about what really is the truth and what really is fact,” she said. “For me, it’s just really important that high school students get complete information, not just abstinence.”
Information about sexually active lifestyles abound, Free to Be advocates argued. They simply bring a message that is often drowned out by teenagers’ daily encounters with peers and the media, said Erik Bjornstrom.
Bjornstrom, 19, of Santa Rosa, was a Free to Be volunteer and employee for three years in high school and after graduation from Rincon Valley Christian School. The program is about information, not coercion, he said.
“A lot of kids in there say that they didn’t know abstinence was an option. We get that comment quite a bit,” he said. “It seems obvious — of course abstinence is an option, nobody can force you to have sex.”
When students ask questions about contraception, Free to Be speakers don’t condemn or ignore it, they cite statistics, he said.
“We don’t encourage it, we don’t discourage it,” he said of various methods of birth control. “We just say, ‘You know, there are contraception methods out there and they do reduce the risk of pregnancy and STDs but they do fail also.’ We stress that abstinence is the only way to be 100 percent sure.”
Bisbee said the group gives presentations in about 30 schools each year. According to the group’s Web site, more than 75,000 teens have heard a Free to Be presentation, including students at Petaluma High, Austin Creek Elementary, Sonoma Valley High, Montgomery High and Brook Haven Middle School.
It was a presentation at Brook Haven in 2006 that sparked parent Robert Edmonds of Santa Rosa to alert the ACLU about Free to Be’s curriculum being presented in public schools.
“I’m quite a spiritual person and a Buddhist myself, but I don’t think it’s appropriate for any group coming from an ideological stance to present scientifically inaccurate information,” he said.
He questioned the statistics the group uses, including the failure rate of contraceptives.
“They go in and speak from a position of authority and call it peer education. What if I don’t want to get married or can’t get married?” he said.
The controversy culminated in an e-mail sent by the Sonoma County Office of Education in May to all county superintendents and principals informing them that Free to Be is no longer allowed to give presentations on campuses.
“If a district is doing a curriculum in a complete and proper fashion and they want to have a guest speaker in addition to that, is that OK? Is it OK as an adjunct?” asked Lynn Garric, Safe Schools Project director for the County Office of Education. “I was told it’s not OK in this case because Free to Be accepts federal funding for abstinence only education.
“I tried asking the question in several ways and the state was very unequivocal and said no, that is not allowed,” Garric said.
She said the controversy is not an argument between the the County Office of Education and the abstinence-teaching group. It’s a question of following state law.
The ACLU followed the education office e-mail with a letter last week asking that district officials confirm within 20 days that “Free to Be will not be teaching in any school in your district in the 2009-2010 school year or in the future.”
Several superintendents from around Sonoma County said they are consulting attorneys on how to proceed.
“It has been a site decision in terms of what the regulations were understood to be,” said Sharon Liddell, superintendent of Santa Rosa City Schools. “What we have done now is to send a letter to our legal counsel and it’s being reviewed.”
Free to Be is also reviewing its options with attorneys and will not comment on whether it would give up federal funding to gain access to the classroom.
That funding may soon not be available.
President Barack Obama last month proposed eliminating abstinence-only education funding from teen pregnancy prevention initiatives.
News researcher Teresa Meikle contributed to this story. Staff Writer Kerry Benefield writes an education blog at extracredit.pressdemocrat.com.
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