was originally reported by Nadra Nittle of . .

Faith Fluker’s cousin was a 14-year-old cheerleader and magnet school student when she became pregnant last year. She didn’t have to be such a young mom; she just lacked the means to avoid teen parenthood, Fluker said.

“She fell pregnant because she didn’t have access to reproductive health resources, and she didn’t have transportation to end the pregnancy, which is what she wanted to do,” said Fluker, an Auburn University senior who champions reproductive rights as part of her work with , a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C. “The lack of sex education in Alabama has led to teen pregnancies, both around me and all over the state.”

After her cousin’s pregnancy, Fluker saw what happened next: the interruption of the teen’s education, the depression she suffered and the judgment cast on her in a small town where sex is discussed in whispers.

Recent reports from the national nonprofit organization SIECUS: Sex Ed for Social Change suggest that youth across the country could find themselves in similar circumstances. The research indicates that the culture wars over comprehensive sex ed are intensifying, a development that could jeopardize the health, safety and future of today’s students.

This year, tracked more than 650 bills introduced in statehouses, finding that about 25 percent of them aimed to restrict access to quality sex education. That marks a 35 percent increase from the previous year, a surge empowered by a White House under the influence of Project 2025 — the Heritage Foundation’s controversial . What’s more is that , which grade states on their sex education policies, paint a bleak picture. Over a quarter of states get Fs because of their failure to provide significant support for sex education.

“Sex education has long been at the forefront of battles within education,” said Alison Macklin, director of public affairs for SIECUS. But sex ed is overwhelmingly popular with the public. SIECUS has found that and 98 percent agree it is in high school, while a 2023 in middle school, and 96 percent support it in high school.

Strong approval for the subject has hindered its foes from seeking to eliminate it outright, prompting them to use more subversive tactics to undermine it, Macklin said. “I think the opposition has really had to be more strategic in their attacks and really looking to whittle away components of sex education,” she continued. “We’ve seen. . . attacks around specifically LGBTQ+ individuals and more targeted towards transgender young people.”

SIECUS’s 2025 State Report Cards illustrate how fragmented sex education is across states, with some requiring no sex ed at all and others mandating that sex ed be comprehensive, medically accurate and inclusive of LGBTQ+ people. Combined, these factors are widely considered to be the gold standard for this curriculum. This year, SIECUS broadened its analysis to include instruction on issues such as menstrual health. But since their sex ed censors some of these topics or does not cover the subject matter in detail, most states received Cs, Ds and Fs. Just Washington, D.C., and six states — California, Illinois, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island and Washington — earned overall grades in the A range, meaning that their sex ed policies are robust, inclusive and scientifically sound.

A student’s place of residence shouldn’t determine whether they receive honest and inclusive information about their bodies and relationships, advocates say, but right now, it does. The nationwide is glaring compared with other subjects schools teach, said Christopher Pepper, a sex educator and coauthor of the new book “: 16 Conversations to Help Tweens and Teens Grow into Confident, Caring Young Men.”

“If you were to visit an algebra class in Connecticut and then one in Alabama, they’d look pretty similar,” he said. “If you try to visit a sex ed class in different states, it’s going to look very different from place to place. Some states offer comprehensive sex ed, some offer abstinence-only, and some don’t offer it at all.”

The gaps in his high school sex ed class stood out to Alfred Vivar Muñoz, a political science major at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV).

“We learned about male and female anatomy, STIs and AIDS, but they didn’t really delve into them,” said Muñoz, co-lead of the Nevada Youth Activist Alliance, which fights for reproductive justice for young people in affiliation with Advocates for Youth. “I did not learn about healthy relationships, and I did not learn about contraceptives.”

in its 2025 State Report Cards. Although the state requires schools to teach sex education and evidence-based HIV/AIDS instruction, the curriculum is not required to cover sexual orientation or gender identity. Also, parents must provide written consent for their children to enroll in this coursework. Nevada lawmakers passed legislation this year that would have instead required parents to opt their children out of the classes, but Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo vetoed it.

Muñoz wondered whether his fellow college students would have lower rates of STIs — near dorms last year — if they had access to better sex ed.

“There’s still a lot of misinformation,” he said.

SIECUS contends that omissions in the curriculum contribute to knowledge gaps around LGBTQ+ sexual health and pregnancy.

Many states don’t . And some, like Florida and Texas, have also passed laws that forbid the discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity in schools generally.

, a sex educator at Widener University who taught in New York City schools for over a decade and offers courses through her website, said sex ed that excludes certain groups harms all students.

“There’s no way to do sex ed without including LGBTQIA+ people. There’s just no way to do it,” she said. “For straight students, it adds a stigma to view queer people in a certain way. … For queer people, it becomes a challenge to live their everyday life, since they have to go to the internet and try to figure out those answers.”

Hart argues that this exclusion is rooted in a system that fears multilayered conversations around sexuality. Opponents to including queer people in the curriculum “don’t want to see critical conversations, critical thinking around these issues because that’s what information does,” they said. “It helps people think through and make decisions about their own health.”

The mandatory classroom viewings of fetal development videos such as “” — which critics call medically inaccurate and visually misleading — also undermine the effort to give young people access to quality sex ed. State legislation has required students as young as third grade to watch the video created by the controversial anti-abortion group Live Action. As of June, seven states — Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, North Dakota, Tennessee — had enacted “Baby Olivia” laws.

“It’s completely inappropriate for third graders,” Macklin said. “It’s directly going against what the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommends. It’s got false information about developmental milestones for a fetus. It uses very inflammatory language. It’s a doctored ultrasound, so it’s like an AI-generated ultrasound. In itself, that is disinformation.”

The video, which posits that fetuses can recognize lullabies and stories, preys on the emotions of students who lack the knowledge to question its veracity, Live Action’s detractors argue. Many of the states that passed laws to require classroom viewings of the video have some of the nation’s most extreme abortion restrictions.

Overall, the “Baby Olivia” video is connected to a larger trend of state laws promoting censorship and erasure, often under the guise of “parental rights.” At the federal level, the Department of Health and Human Services has threatened states with the loss of tens of millions of dollars if they don’t strike “gender ideology” from their sex education materials, SIECUS noted. When states give into such pressures, schools and educators are dissuaded from providing an inclusive and accurate curriculum.

“There’s a lot of fear and misinformation used,” Macklin said. “The opposition really uses these tactics to make parents think their rights are being taken away, when, of course, parents have rights when it comes to education; that’s already built into the system.”

Much of the fear parents have about sex ed stems from the idea that the curriculum is focused on the act of intercourse when comprehensive sex ed is largely designed to teach students about sexual health and relationship fundamentals. In countries like Australia and New Zealand, the course is known as “Relationships and Sexuality Education,” and the young people enrolled learn about safety as well as health.

“We teach about how to set boundaries. We teach about healthy relationships and how to watch out for warning signs of abusive relationships,” Pepper said of sex educators. “We talk a lot about consent — making sure that people are entering into situations in a consensual way, how to check for consent and how to respond if someone says no.”

Teaching students about consent as part of sex ed, Pepper said, can reduce rates of sexual violence, making communities safer. These lessons are crucial for boys, most of whom are well-meaning, he continued.

“They don’t want to harm anyone else. They don’t want to be creepy,” Pepper said. “They’re looking for guidance about how to navigate dating and relationships in a way that feels safe and consensual and fun for everyone involved.”

It is also imperative that boys and young men learn about contraception, instead of leaving the issue for young women alone to manage. Pepper teaches the boys in his classes about a wide range of options.

“If you have a sexual situation that could result in a pregnancy, that should not just be on the female partner,” Pepper said. “Both of those people should care about this. And you can’t make informed choices unless you have accurate information.”

Increasingly, state and district policies are requiring schools to not only provide students with basic information about puberty but also about , regardless of gender. Forty-one bills, according to SIECUS, have been introduced to help students obtain .

“It’s so great to see these types of menstrual equity bills being passed,” Macklin said. “It allows for greater knowledge about the menstrual cycle for everybody.”

Nicole Reksopuro, a high school junior near Portland, Oregon, welcomes these legislative advances. She took her first sex ed course in middle school, describing the materials “as pretty high level.” Her state is one of the seven with . Oregon earned the high mark because it offers a comprehensive and LGBTQ+-inclusive curriculum that also must teach about consent and not be fear- or shame-based. Moreover, parents must opt their kids out of the content rather than into it.

As grateful as she is to have received quality sex ed before high school, Reksopuro would have liked the course to go into more specifics. She learned about menstruation and healthy relationships, “but I wish they went deeper into personal hygiene,” she said via email. “I did appreciate that it helped me think critically about my body and how to take care of it.”

Once she entered high school, she received additional sex ed that reinforced what she learned in middle school and explored healthy relationships in greater detail.

“I still wish there was more about taking care of our bodies and more time spent on ways to set healthy boundaries with different people in our lives,” she said.

Reksopuro’s experience does not surprise sex educator Hart, who said that even in progressive states, the training teachers undergo in the subject is often lacking. Plus, the legacy of class and racial segregation means that marginalized students tend to get inferior sex ed, no matter their state.

“As a Black, queer, nonbinary person, I’m really curious as to what are your politics and your stance and your values beyond being a red or a blue state because a lot of times those colors bleed and start to look very similar,” she said.

As students and advocates in blue states push for refinements to their sex ed courses, activists like Fluker are working to give youth where they live access to basic contraception so they don’t become teenage parents.

Fluker once worked at an Alabama Walgreens and saw young people scrape together the cash to buy emergency contraceptive Plan B. That experience fuels her current work to get condoms into schools and community centers, but the effort is not without pushback. She has to justify to parents why she’s providing these products. “They obviously know that pregnancy is a consequence, but they don’t believe that their children are [sexually] active,” she said.

on its 2025 State Report Cards. While the state requires sex ed to be medically accurate and students in grades 5-12 to receive instruction on HIV/AIDS, it does not demand that the curriculum include instruction on consent, sexual orientation or gender identity. Additionally, schools that teach sex ed must focus on abstinence, but parents can still prevent their children from taking the course.

Although Muñoz is across the country in Nevada, he can relate to Fluker’s experiences. He said that sex education has been stigmatized.

“It has been the villain of the story,” he said. “But I think these topics should be addressed before people go to university, just so they know what to watch out for, to know what’s healthy and what’s good.”

Some state lawmakers agree and are introducing legislation to strengthen sex ed rather than weaken the curriculum. They are presenting opt-out policies rather than opt-in ones. A rising number of state bills also focus on consent education, sexual violence prevention and protecting librarians and educators from censorship efforts.

“It’s not all doom and gloom,” Macklin said.

At the end of the day, the policies enacted will reflect what kind of future lawmakers and stakeholders want for young people — one where they enjoy safety, bodily autonomy and healthy relationships or one where they are vulnerable to coercion, infections and misinformation.

“We would never put one of my teenagers into a car without giving them the education they need to operate that car safely, whether I’m ready for them to operate the car or not,” Macklin said. “I think when we think about sexuality or sexual activity from that perspective, we can all agree as parents that we want our young people to be safe and we want them to make good decisions.”

Trump administration tells 40 states to remove gender identity from sex ed or lose federal funds

The Trump administration is threatening to pull federal funding from 40 states for a sex education program aimed at vulnerable teens unless those states remove references in their curriculum to gender identity and transgender people.

, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said the action reflected the Trump administration’s “ongoing commitment to protecting children from attempts to indoctrinate them with delusional ideology.”

The threat comes after California refused to change its curriculum last week and HHS terminated the state’s nearly $6 million-a-year grant.

The states that received notices to change their curriculum are: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

Withholding federal funds to punish states for teaching about gender identity is yet another way the Trump administration has sought to and advance .

Through and , the Trump administration is also seeking to and stop schools from letting trans kids use the bathroom or .

States will have 60 days to comply or risk losing their federal funds for the Personal Responsibility Education Program, or PREP.

PREP represents a small slice of sex ed nationwide, and . But it targets a particularly vulnerable group of teens and pre-teens who are at a higher risk for pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections. In California, many of the 13,000 young people who participate each year live in foster care, are incarcerated, or are experiencing homelessness.

with the federal law that established PREP, because its materials included instruction about what it means to identify as transgender and that gender identity is not always synonymous with the sex someone is assigned at birth. The agency subsequently reviewed curriculum used by other states — .

parts of California’s curriculum “could encourage kids to contemplate mutilating their genitals, ‘altering their body 
 through hormone therapy,’ ‘adding or removing breast tissue,’ and ‘changing their name.’” This appears to refer to the possibility that students might socially transition or pursue gender-affirming medical care.

California officials told HHS that they wouldn’t change their materials because they were medically accurate, previously approved by the agency, and compliant with federal law — which is silent on whether PREP should teach about gender identity. State health officials also said that changing the curriculum could prompt public schools that use the same materials to drop them, because California law requires sex ed to include information about gender identity.

A spokesperson for the state’s public health department did not respond to Chalkbeat’s questions about how it planned to address the funding gap. California health officials told the Trump administration they reserved the right to challenge the funding termination, but they have yet to do so.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at .

Public battles over , often framed around “,” have become more intense in recent years.

These tragedies are largely preventable. Groundbreaking tells us that nearly every instance of child sexual abuse takes place after the perpetrator has engaged in multiple grooming behaviors to form a trusting relationship with the child and then later exploit them. 

If educators and parents know what to look for — especially the “red flag” behaviors that almost always coincide with abuse — we could save hundreds of thousands of kids each year.

Child sexual abuse is rarely an isolated or random incident. A recent study of over 1,000 victims confirmed that 99% of them experienced some form of grooming before their abuse. Of — ranging from gift-giving to seemingly innocent touching to sharing pornography — victims experienced 14 such behaviors on average before the actual abuse occurred.

In other words, there are typically more than a dozen distinct warning signs that could tip off a teacher, coach, parent, or other concerned adult that something isn’t right.

Certain are especially critical to recognize. that these high-risk grooming behaviors are overwhelmingly common in instances of child sexual abuse. 

These behaviors include watching a child undressing, showing pornography to a child, talking to a child about past sexual experiences, and undressing or exposing oneself or encouraging a child to do so. But red flags also include behaviors that may not be as obvious, like isolating a child from family and peers or attempting to acclimate a child to their touch while distracting them with another activity, such as a hand “accidentally” brushing a private part while wrestling.

All of these behaviors always warrant intervention with the child’s parents or educators and often warrant reporting possible abuse to the authorities.

School staff and parents should commit each of these behaviors to memory, especially when children are joining an activity that involves a new adult in their lives. Teachers, for instance, can be especially vigilant at the start of a new school year or when students begin a new sport. In addition, parents should be especially alert when their children take music lessons, start other new classes or join a faith-based youth group. Parents and educators should discuss these behaviors with coaches, teachers, youth advisors, and each other.

Behavior such as hugging a child may be innocuous and healthy — or a precursor to something nefarious. It can be challenging to know when to intervene. But victims’ stories often take the form of “first A, then B, then C.” Grooming toward abuse is a cumulative process. It’s critical for adults to stay vigilant about whether an adult’s actions toward a child are progressing toward red flag behaviors.

That’s why we must also teach children the warning signs of grooming.

Parents shouldn’t shy away from discussing red flag behaviors with their children in developmentally appropriate ways. For example, book series like can help children of all ages learn about safe and unsafe touch, body boundaries, and trusting their gut when something doesn’t feel right.

Most states, but not all, supplement what parents teach their children with legislation like, which requires K-12 public schools to implement sexual abuse prevention education for children of all ages.

But states often lack rigor and consistency in how they enforce these laws. In Washington state, for example, an oversight board identified 38 different curricula in place statewide – a majority of which neglected to give educators resources for what to do if a student disclosed abuse. Every curriculum should include the latest evidence-based research on grooming.

Unfortunately, not every state requires prevention education for teachers, but that’s equally imperative. on one training program for educators, Darkness to Light’s Stewards of Children, found that teachers who completed the training increased their reporting of previously unrecognized abuse by 82%.

Teachers and parents alike should make sure kids know that they won’t be blamed for reporting behaviors that make them uneasy, since abusers often tell children to keep it a secret.

To stop abuse before it occurs, all adults in a child’s life must be able to identify potential grooming behavior, especially the red flags. With an average of 14 different grooming behaviors preceding each case of child sexual abuse, prevention is possible. We just have to know what to look for.

OKLAHOMA CITY — Oklahoma lawmakers filed hundreds of bills affecting education for the next legislative session.

Oklahoma Voice collected some of the top trends and topics that emerged in legislation related to students, teachers and schools. The state Legislature will begin considering bills once its 2025 session begins Feb. 3.

Bills would restrict minors’ use of cellphones and social media

As expected, lawmakers filed multiple bills to limit student cellphone use in public schools, an issue that leaders in both chambers of the Legislature have said is a top priority this year.

The House and Senate each have a bill that would prohibit students from using cellphones during the entire school day. Some while others allow cellphone access in between classes.

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After , Gov. Kevin Stitt that have done so.

from Education Committee vice chair Sen. Ally Seifried, R-Claremore, would require all districts to ban students from accessing their cellphones from the morning bell until dismissal, and it would create a $2 million grant program to help schools enact phone-free policies.

from a House leader on education funding, Rep. Chad Caldwell, R-Enid, would prohibit student cellphone use while on school premises.

Multiple bills target children’s social media use. Sen. Kristen Thompson, R-Edmond, aims to ban social media accounts for anyone under 16 with and, with , to deem social media addictive and dangerous for youth mental health. 

A from Seifried would outlaw social media companies from collecting data from and personalizing content for a minor’s account, which a child wouldn’t be allowed to have without parent consent

from Sen. Micheal Bergstron, R-Adair, would require districts to prohibit the use of social media on school computers or on school-issued devices while on campus. from Sen. Darcy Jech, R-Kingfisher, would allow minors or their parents to sue a social media company over an “adverse mental health outcome arising, in whole or in part, from the minor’s excessive use of the social media platform’s algorithmically curated service.”

School chaplain bill reemerges

Multiple lawmakers have refiled a bill seeking to enable . A version of the controversial bill but .

Its original author, Rep. Kevin West, R-Moore, refiled it as . Sen. Shane Jett, R-Shawnee, and Sen. Dana Prieto, R-Tulsa, filed similar school chaplain bills with and .

More restrictions suggested for sex education, gender expression

Another unsuccessful bill returning this year is legislation that would have families opt into sex education for their children instead of opting out, which is the state’s current policy.

Students wouldn’t be allowed to take any sex education course or hear a related presentation without written permission from their parents under from Prieto, from Danny Williams, R-Seminole, and from Rep. Tim Turner, R-Kinta.

Sen. Dusty Deevers, R-Elgin, would have any reference to sex education and mental health removed from health education in schools with .

Prieto’s bill also would exclude any instruction about sexual orientation or gender identity from sex education courses. It would require school employees to notify a child’s parents before referring to the student by a different name or pronouns.

Other bills similarly would limit students’ ability to be called by a different name or set of pronouns at school if it doesn’t correspond to their biological sex.

¶Ù±đ±đ±č±đ°ùČő’ would bar teachers from calling students by pronouns other than what aligns with their biological sex or by any name other than their legal name without parent consent. Educators and fellow students could not be punished for calling a child by their legal name and biological pronouns.

Rep. Gabe Woolley, R-Broken Arrow, filed a .

No public school could compel an employee or volunteer to refer to a student by a name or pronoun other than what corresponds with their sex at birth under from Sen. David Bullard, R-Durant, nor could any printed or multimedia materials in a school refer to a student by another gender.

Corporal punishment in schools

Once again, Oklahoma lawmakers will consider whether to outlaw of students with disabilities. State law currently prohibits using physical pain as discipline on children with only the most significant cognitive disabilities.

In 2020, the state Department of Education used its administrative rules to ban corporal punishment on any student with a disability, but similar bills have failed to pass the state Legislature, drawing frustration from child advocates.

Sen. Dave Rader, R-Tulsa, was an author of last year’s bill to prohibit corporal punishment of students with any type of disability. He filed again for consideration this session.

from Rep. John Waldron, D-Tulsa, would require schools to report to the Oklahoma State Department of Education the number of times they administer corporal punishment along with the age, race, gender and disability status of the students receiving it. The state Department of Education would then have to compile the information in a report to the Oklahoma Commission on Children and Youth.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oklahoma Voice maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janelle Stecklein for questions: info@oklahomavoice.com.

Arkansas needs a more robust sexual health education landscape in order to reduce the state’s high rates of teenage pregnancy and births, a coalition of advocates for children’s health and wellbeing asserted in a report published Wednesday.

The report from Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families includes several policy recommendations to “move Arkansas into an age-appropriate and evidence-based continuum of sexual health education.”

AACF formed the coalition in 2022 after releasing data that showed 28 of every 1,000 Arkansas teenagers had given birth, almost twice the national average of 15 per 1,000 teenagers. Only 22% of teenage pregnancies were planned, .

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“Through our research for that report, we found that teenagers aren’t any more sexually active here than they are in other states,” last week’s report states. “The key difference is access to contraceptives, especially the most effective kind, and lack of information because sexual health education isn’t required in Arkansas.”

says that schools teaching sex education “shall include instruction in sexual abstinence, and no funds shall be utilized for abortion referral.”

Within the confines of the law, schools can take an “abstinence-plus” approach, meaning “a curriculum that builds off a foundation of abstinence education but can also include more medically accurate and evidence-based approaches,” AACF’s report states.

A 2017 survey by the found nearly 85% of Arkansas’ 262 public school districts taught some form of abstinence, including having students sign virginity pledges, while 34 districts said they didn’t teach sex education at all.

AACF hopes to gather more recent data on schools’ sex education curricula in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, said Olivia Gardner, AACF’s education policy director.

“I know anecdotally from this work that lots of Arkansans would like to see changes within the system,” Gardner said. “They would like to see things happening at school, and they don’t feel comfortable having those conversations at home.”

The coalition’s recommendations include, but are not limited to:

Creating new requirements for school-based sex education “to include more medically accurate information, including opportunities to teach ‘abstinence plus’ curricula”;“Including parents and medical providers as important sources of sexual health information and abuse prevention”;Supporting the expansion of sexual violence prevention programs;Supporting existing out-of-school programs that provide sexual health educationIncluding menstruation in sex education and making feminine hygiene products more accessible;Creating a nonprofit focused on improving sexual health education.

The report proposes an eight-year timeline for enacting the recommendations, with the first few years meant to be “baby steps,” Gardner said.

Members of the coalition behind the report agree that a multi-pronged, collaborative approach is necessary to put the recommendations into action.

“Sexual health in general literally affects everybody throughout their entire life,” said Katie Clark, a member of the coalition and the founder of the Arkansas Period Poverty Project. “It’s literally why we’re all here, and in order to address it, we need to talk about all these different issues and make legislators see that [better sex education] is something that will positively affect Arkansans for years to come.”

‘Ignoring it is worse’

Teenage parents are less likely to complete high school and college, which limits their economic opportunities in a state with an already high poverty rate, Gardner said.

Babies born to teenage girls are more likely to be premature or underweight, which can create lifelong health problems. According to AACF, 9.5% of all babies in Arkansas were born with low birth weights in 2021.

Additionally, Arkansas has the nation’s highest maternal mortality rate and the third highest infant mortality rate, according to the Arkansas Center for Health Improvement. Elected officials from both parties, , have expressed support for bolstering the state’s maternal and infant health care infrastructure.

While advocates agree that medically accurate sex education will help address these issues, there has been little support for sex education policies in the state Legislature in recent years. Senate Minority Leader Greg Leding, D-Fayetteville, introduced to require “age- and developmentally appropriate” and “medically accurate and complete” sex education in K-12 public schools, but the bill did not advance.

Lawmakers from both parties were receptive to the portion of the bill regarding education about safe and healthy dating practices, Leding said in an interview.

“It was really when we got into more explicit education regarding safe sexual practices that we met resistance,” he said.

Most people can agree that reducing and preventing unsafe behaviors is important, but advocates are often met with unease when discussing how to broach such topics with teenagers, said Natalie Tibbs, executive director of the Children & Family Advocacy Center in Northwest Arkansas.

“Ignoring it is worse, so it’s about finding that balance of providing age-appropriate education that is empowering and therefore creating prevention, not curiosity,” Tibbs said. “The reality is, our kids are curious anyway, they’re talking to each other, and do we really want our children learning about it from their peers who don’t have it right, or do we want them learning from teachers?”

Tibbs is a member of AACF’s sexual health education coalition and works in child abuse prevention and victim advocacy. She said teachers should receive annual training that helps them identify and report signs of child maltreatment; state law requires educators to complete this training every four years.

Both Leding’s 2021 bill and AACF’s report emphasize teaching young people about healthy relationships and consent. Tibbs agreed that this is important to prevent both child abuse and teenage pregnancy.

“We don’t see a significantly high pregnancy rate as it relates to child abuse, but it is there, so anytime we talk about sex education, we want to make sure there’s a piece of education that relates to abuse,” Tibbs said. “
We don’t want to assume that all pregnancies are consensual.”

Legislative approaches

Rep. Aaron Pilkington, R-Knoxville, said he next year legislation similar to another failed 2021 bill, which would exempt feminine hygiene products from state sales tax.

Arkansas remains one of 21 states that continue to tax period products, despite exempting other health-related products. According to the state , the tax costs menstruating Arkansans over $1 million per year.

Schools are not required to provide period products to students, which can lead them to miss school while menstruating or develop health problems from using other methods such as articles of clothing to stanch the bleeding, Clark said.

This highlights why menstruation should be part of sexual health education, she said, and many Arkansans have told her they did not learn about menstruation in school.

“If they don’t have the proper education, the words, the ways to describe it, they can’t educate their daughters well,” Clark said. “When people hear ‘sex education,’ they think intercourse and that’s it, but children and teens need to know what’s normal and not normal so they can ask questions.”

A proposed ballot measure to eliminate the tax on feminine hygiene products and diapers to make this year’s November ballot. The ballot question committee, of which Clark is chair, to the attorney general’s office Monday, seeking approval to start gathering voters’ signatures to put the measure on the 2026 ballot.

Leding said he and other Democrats hope to reintroduce legislation about sex education in a future legislative session.

“I don’t think anybody, regardless of party, can look at the situation in Arkansas and not believe that we need to do much more,” he said.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arkansas Advocate maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sonny Albarado for questions: info@arkansasadvocate.com. Follow Arkansas Advocate on and .

The state dragged its sex education guidelines into a new millennium last year, updating health frameworks for pre-K through 12th grade students to include modern language on sexuality and consent. But a growing coalition that has pushed for the better part of a decade to keep sex ed in step with the times says there’s still more work to be done – if only the House of Representatives will get on board.

Supporters of the are taking a fifth swing at passing the legislation, which has made it through the state Senate four times only to fizzle in the House. The Senate is expected to vote on the bill next week, and proponents believe the tide is finally turning in their favor in both chambers.

“I just think that the time is now,” said bill sponsor Sen. Sal DiDomenico, of Everett, who has pushed for the Healthy Youth Act for the past decade along with House sponsor Rep. Jim O’Day, of West Boylston. “I think there’s momentum built up behind the bill,” DiDomenico said. “The coalition has been working very hard, getting support and just showing people that we don’t have time to wait – these are kids who are still making decisions every single day and still talking about this every single day in their own little groups, and we need to get that information in their hands so they can make the decisions going forward.”

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Though the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education last year its sex and health education guidelines for the , with support from Gov. Maura Healey, the Healthy Youth Act has “teeth” that the framework does not, DiDomenico said.

Broadly, the act would require that state standards for sex and health education be inclusive, reflective of current science, and updated at least every 10 years. Cities and towns would be required to describe their sexual education curricula to the department each year, as well as report the number of students receiving that education.

The new DESE framework “is a good suggestion,” DiDomenico said. “It’s a floor, but not really digging deep into the curriculum standards.” For instance, he said, it still allows schools to choose to provide abstinence-only sex education. Under the Healthy Youth Act, any educational institution that offers a sex ed course has to provide “medically accurate, age-appropriate, comprehensive sexual health education.”

Under the act, health curriculum guidelines would cover human anatomy, reproductive and sexual activity, preventing sexually transmitted diseases and HIV/AIDS, effective use of contraceptives, discussing safe sexual activity and healthy relationships, and age-appropriate education on gender identity and sexual orientation that affirms a variety of gender and sexual identities.

The act would not override or change Massachusetts state law allowing schools to decide whether to offer sexual health courses and parents to opt their children out of that health segment. Parents and guardians would be informed by letter about the comprehensive sex education curriculum and informed of the opt-out option.

But the act would prevent the molasses-like evolution of sex ed frameworks that’s marked the last quarter-century. It isn’t enough, DiDomenico said, to bank on a sympathetic governor with an interest in inclusive health policy.

“We don’t know what the future brings us and who will be in that seat,” he said. “So if we do not have a regular updating process, then it’s up to the will of the people who are in charge at that particular moment in time and if they decide to kick the can down the road, or they decide not to address it, or they decide to just ignore it and hope that someone else will take it up at a later date.”

Gearing up for yet another tilt at the windmill, supporters have said this cycle that momentum is on their side – around 80 representatives and senators have signed on to versions of , including members of House leadership. This push coincided last year with a wave of anxiety about reproductive choices and support for LGBTQ+ people.

Speaker Ron Mariano, who stood alongside elected leaders and reproductive health organizations to for protecting access to medication abortion, said at the time about the sex ed bill that he was “going through the details and having conversations with members.” His office did not respond to requests for comment.

This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

OKLAHOMA CITY — An Oklahoma House committee narrowly advanced a measure that would only allow a student to receive sexual education if their parents opt in.

, by Rep. Danny Williams, R-Seminole, also removes a requirement that students be taught about consent during sexual encounters.

Currently, state law requires parents to opt out if they don’t want their child to learn about sexual education in school, but Williams aims to flip that so parents instead have to give written permission for their child to receive it.

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“People should know what their (children) are being asked to be involved in,” he said.

Williams said when he attended school, sexual education wasn’t part of the curriculum.

His bill also requires schools to include lessons dealing with biological sex classifications.

It also allows people to ignore preferred pronouns, such as he or she, if the pronouns don’t correspond to a person’s biological sex.

He said he’s concerned that parents don’t pay attention to notes that come home from school and might miss the opportunity to opt out. He believes it should be up to a parent to decide whether a child should learn about sexuality in school.

“If it passes and becomes a law, a lot more parents will be completely engaged in their children’s education because it will challenge them to be part of the decision making process,” Williams said.

Rep. Nick Archer, R-Elk City, who voted against the measure, said he’s concerned that parents, who want their children to receive sexual education, might overlook the school notes that allow them to opt in.

He said Oklahoma ranks in the Top 10 in and for some , especially in rural areas.

Some parents believe trained sexual education teachers are better prepared to educate about preventing the spread of those diseases, Archer said.

He said he’s also concerned that the bill removes the requirement to teach students about consent.

Rep. Jay Steagall, R-Yukon, said requiring parents to opt in allows parents to provide “positive affirmation” that children should participate.

But Rep. Jared Deck, D-Norman, said he’s concerned that the change might violate federal laws that prohibit in education programs.

Students whose parents aren’t actively involved might miss out on sex education, Deck said.

“When we send kids home to abusive spaces, to parents who are irresponsible, what is the consequence for their actions or their lack of actions whenever they aren’t teaching,” he said, adding that he’s concerned a lack of comprehensive sex education could lead to negative family outcomes.

He also said the lawmakers are continually changing the state’s curriculum at a time when school districts need dependability. Local communities want the power to decide what’s being taught in their schools, Deck said. They don’t want lawmakers dictating that to them, he said.

The measure, which passed 4-3, heads to the full House.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oklahoma Voice maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janelle Stecklein for questions: info@oklahomavoice.com. Follow Oklahoma Voice on and .

Angelique Estrada, who uses they/them pronouns, remembered the single health class she took in middle school that only briefly mentioned sex education.

“It wasn’t really about sex ed, it was just about getting your period,” the 18-year-old recalled. “That’s really all I had in school.”

Paola Duran, 19, shared a similar experience during her freshman year in high school.

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“I took a health class, and that was basically all the sex ed that I really knew,” Duran said. “Growing up in a Hispanic household you don’t really hear much about sex, except don’t do it.”

Tales of limited sex education are nothing new for Texas as one of 18 states that do not require it to graduate high school. Instead, students in Texas take a health class in middle school, which includes lessons on puberty, abuse prevention and sexually transmitted diseases.

Though some school districts, including the Socorro Independent School District, work with local health organizations to expand their sex ed curriculum, the majority of Texas students learn from a

That changed for Estrada and Duran when the teens became interns with the Fronterizx Community Project, or FCP, where they learned about sex education and participated in projects to share their knowledge with their peers.

Interns are paid $15 an hour to attend workshops, create online content and give presentations on sex education throughout the borderland. The organization also pays students a $50 “self care” and travel stipends.

“There is just so clearly a gap in the school system and students crave the information and want to talk about it,” said FCP program coordinator Corinthia Fraire. “Our goal is to fill in that gap in a way that is welcoming to young people and to create a space for them to be able to have different discussions.”

Data shows that gap exists throughout Texas.

It is estimated that just under 17% of schools in the state offer abstinence-plus sex education — also known as comprehensive sex education — which focuses on teaching medically accurate information about contraception, according to a 2017  Just over 58% of schools in the state offer abstinence-only sex education classes and about 25% do not offer it at all, according to the study.

Schools that do offer sex education must stress abstinence as the preferred birth control method for unmarried young people. Schools are also required to provide parents with access to their health and sex ed curriculum and can also opt their child out of any part of the lesson.

FCP coordinator and former intern, Angelica Bustos said that many schools that do offer sex education still fail to address the needs of LGBTQ students and those who are already sexually active.

“They don’t have anybody to ask questions to because their teachers don’t always have the opportunity to answer those questions freely without getting in trouble,” Bustos said. “Then they go home and they can’t ask those questions because they don’t quite feel comfortable asking their parents.”

As part of FCP, interns learn about topics you would expect to find in any comprehensive sex ed class, like contraception and teen pregnancy, but also get to have discussions that may be considered taboo at home or in school, like gender identity, masturbation and pleasure. Other times they talk about social issues like birth control accessibility and teen mental health.

Duran, who took part in the program in 2021, said she learned about the stigma minority women and non-binary people face when talking about sex.

“I just learned that it’s important to have conversations and it’s important to destigmatize a lot of these topics,” she said.

Estrada, who was an intern in 2022, said students also learned about condoms, consent and the importance of communication.

FCP is funded by the , a non-profit that offers financial assistance to patients seeking abortion care in El Paso, Juarez and Southern New Mexico. The fund paused its services in June 2022 after the Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe V. Wade.

Since FCP was founded in 2018, dozens of high school students have taken part in the various iterations of the program.

Initially, the organization aimed to address unwanted teen pregnancies by trying to change local school policies and improving access to sex education.

“If we were to update any policies, we would need to directly hear from the people who are being impacted, which is young people,” Fraire said.

The first cohort of interns was hired to give presentations on teen birth rates and the impacts of teen pregnancy at local School Health Advisory Council — or SHAC — meetings. These councils are made of members from the community and are meant to give school districts guidance on their health education and sex ed curriculum.

In 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit and FCP interns were no longer able to attend SHAC meetings, they began giving virtual presentations to school boards, holding townhalls and gathering signatures for a petition to try to improve access to sex education in El Paso schools.

Though their efforts failed, Fraire said the group was able to learn from the experience and began changing their goals.

“Some of the feedback we got from the youth was that they would receive their sex education as pamphlets or like notebooks without any type of lecture and was more self guided and optional,” Fraire said. “Knowing the long journey it would take to change school policies, we decided to take matters into our own hands and focus on curating a curriculum and teaching different topics ourselves.”

To take part in the internship students must get their parent’s permission and sign an agreement ensuring they understand what type of conversations their kids will be having. Fraire said parents are also invited to attend and listen in on discussions and activities.

For now, Fraire said FCP is limited to hiring six to eight interns a year but hopes to grow the organization to be able to offer in-depth sex education internships to more El Paso teens.

This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

In June 2023, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts shared with the public a draft of a new framework that will guide .

The that specify expectations for what Massachusetts students learn about sex in schools was 24 years ago, when most U.S. homes were not yet internet-connected.

The new guidelines are part of a larger framework that addresses many aspects of health, including physical education, nutrition and hygiene. They include important improvements over the 1999 version, including standards that pertain to the well-being of gender and sexual minority populations. That’s noteworthy, given that other U.S. states have recently .

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The draft Massachusetts framework has been in development since 2018 but is not yet final. After a public comment period, which is open until Aug. 28, the framework is subject to approval by the commonwealth’s Board of Elementary and Secondary Education and could be adopted as early as the fall of 2023.

I’m a public health researcher who . I have co-developed and tested a new sex education module for high school students in Massachusetts with funding from the National Institutes of Health, so I read the part of the framework that deals with sex education with great interest.

I’ll provide some more detail on the Massachusetts framework below, but first it is important to understand the state of sex education in the U.S.

Sex education and pornography

Many young people in the U.S are not getting the sex education that they need. Currently, only 38 U.S. states and the District of Columbia mandate any kind of sex education. As a result, it isn’t surprising that of U.S. adolescents say that they have received information about where to get birth control before having heterosexual intercourse for the first time. And the racial disparities are concerning: Black and Hispanic teens are less likely than white teens to receive education about prevention of sexually transmitted infections or HIV, or .

So where do teenagers and young adults go to get information about sex, in the absence of comprehensive sex education at school?

According to a nationally representative , young adults in the U.S. are more likely to turn to pornography than to their friends, parents, doctors or any other source. That’s a problem, because pornography isn’t designed to relay medically accurate or helpful information about sex — it’s designed to get clicks or likes, make money and entertain the viewer.

Massachusetts is not one of the states that mandates sex education. However, all public schools to teach health education. As a local control state, Massachusetts issues frameworks and guidance and allows local school districts boards to decide how to implement them. This approach will continue with the new framework once adopted.

Importantly, the new Massachusetts framework recognizes the prevalence of pornography, and it addresses other critical sex education topics for the modern world.

For example, the framework specifies that in grades 6 to 8, adolescents should learn about laws related to sexual digital imagery. This is important because otherwise they may not realize that possessing or sending nude digital photos of people younger than 18 years old is a crime even if the sender is also a minor.

The framework also suggests that adolescents should be able to analyze similarities and differences between friendships, romantic relationships and sexual relationships, and discuss various ways to show affection within each. It expects them to be able to define sexual consent and describe factors, such as drug and alcohol use, that can influence capacity to give consent. It recommends teaching strategies to help students recognize when someone is grooming or recruiting a young person for possible commercial sexual exploitation like human trafficking.

While these points are strong, I would like to see a recommendation that schools tell youth that mainstream online pornography is not a good source of information about sexual behavior.

A series of online games

Our research team, which includes , and BU , has been working on new sex education teaching materials for Massachusetts high schools for . As researchers, we endeavored to create an online sex education module that reflected the best available evidence and feedback that we got from young people.

Our teaching materials are in the form of short, online games that students engage with on their own time, and then come back to the classroom to discuss. One of the games has students order the effectiveness of 11 different contraceptive methods. Another provides them with information about ways pornography can provide unhelpful expectations about sex and sexuality. A third game invites students to act as an advice columnist to solve relationship problems for peers.

When we tested the materials with 54 teens ages 14-18 years old in Massachusetts in 2022, we found a statistically significant positive impact on a range of outcomes, from increased condom use to fewer experiences of abuse by a dating partner. We will partner with a number of Massachusetts high schools in the next several years to continue testing the impact of our module.

Reading the framework

In reading the new Massachusetts guidelines, our team noted several strengths of its approach.

First, the framework is evidence-based. In other words, the recommendations reflect the latest and best available research about how adolescents develop, learn and behave with regard to sex and sexuality.

Second, the guidance is developmentally and age-appropriate, with different recommendations for different grade levels, and with careful attention to diverse perspectives, cultural differences, and the importance of delivering material in a way that would not traumatize students.

Third, the framework encourages youths’ critical thinking, reasoning, decision-making and problem-solving.

It is my hope that Massachusetts will strengthen the guidance on pornography. If it does, the new framework will be well positioned to serve as a national model.

This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the .

A new Indiana law that critics say will in schools under the guise of blocking conversations around “human sexuality” now faces a legal challenge.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Indiana filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana Friday on behalf of a public school teacher in Indianapolis who says the law infringes her constitutional rights.

Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb last month signed into law , which requires Indiana schools to notify parents and prohibits human sexuality instruction to the youngest Hoosier students.

Kayla Smiley, an elementary school teacher in the Indianapolis Public School system, claims in the court challenge that the law poses First Amendment violations for teachers by taking away her “ability to speak as a citizen on matters of public interest and to speak away from work on matters unrelated to her employment and addressed to a public audience.”

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The complaint additionally argues that the law is overly broad, given that neither “instruction” nor “human sexuality” is defined. 

Smiley emphasized that “instruction” and interactions with students happen both inside and outside the classroom — making it hard to know when a line has been crossed.

“The key terms of ‘instruction’ and ‘human sexuality’ are impossibly vague and lack any ascertainable standards for determining whether or not the law has been violated,” the lawsuit reads.

Teacher says law is ‘impossibly vague’

Smiley said in the lawsuit that she is unable to determine how to conform her behavior to the law so she does not risk losing her license. 

According to the complaint, the teacher has a classroom library in her classroom that contains “age-appropriate books across a diverse spectrum of subjects and concerns, including LGBTQ+ issues, such as biographies of Harvey Milk, and Elton John.” She also has in her student classroom library the book “And Tango Make Three,” which is based on the true story of two male penguins who raise a chick together.

The lawsuit alleges that teachers have “no idea” about whether or not such books qualify as “instruction . . . on human sexuality” or whether or not they can discuss any topics regarding same-sex relationships.

Smiley also carries a water bottle in class, in hallways, and before and after school, which has on it stickers and pins supporting LGBTQ+ rights, including one that reads “Trans rights are human rights.” The bottle displays rainbow flags that are widely recognized as the symbol of LGBTQ+ pride, too. 

“She is unsure if she is still allowed to engage in this display outside of her class or what to do if the display prompts a discussion in her class,” the lawsuit said about the water bottle.

Smiley is seeking an injunction to prevent the law from taking effect July 1.

“HEA 1608 is written so broadly that it would be next to impossible for teachers to determine what they can and cannot say to students,” said Ken Falk, ACLU of Indiana legal director, in a written statement on Friday. “In addition, teachers have a First Amendment right to express themselves as private citizens outside of the classroom, including in the school’s hallways, playground, or before and after school, but the vagueness of this law would certainly have a chilling effect on those rights.” 

How the controversial law came to be

The law, authored by Rep. Michelle Davis, R-Whiteland, is reminiscent of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law that has been described by some as one of the most “hateful” pieces of legislation in the country.

the measure intends to “empower Hoosier parents by reinforcing that they’re in the driver’s seat when it comes to introducing sensitive topics to their children.” She said previously that the bill was a response to “numerous concerns of parents in her district.

Supporters further say parents have the “right” and “responsibility” to control what their children learn — and are called — when at school.

have argued that it’s part of a nationwide wave of legislation “singling out LGBTQ+ people and their families.” More specifically, they say that the new law could put transgender children at risk of harm if they’re outed to unsupportive or abusive parents.

“This session, legislators were determined to target LGBTQ community members and to censor conversation about the LGBTQ community in schools, HEA 1608 was no exception,” said Katie Blair, ACLU of Indiana advocacy director. “This bill, like others across the country, was modeled after Florida’s infamous ‘Don’t Say Gay’ law. LGBTQ students exist at all ages and in all grade levels and their stories belong in Indiana schools.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Indiana Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Niki Kelly for questions: info@indianacapitalchronicle.com. Follow Indiana Capital Chronicle on and .

This reporting was supported by the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Reproductive Rights Reporting Fund.

SABINE COUNTY — When condoms were distributed at a career fair five years ago, West Sabine High School’s seventh and eighth graders took handfuls and tucked them inside their jackets and pants pockets. It set field trip chaperone Carnelius Gilder into a panic.

Gilder had driven the students to a church in the area to attend the career fair. Students had attended it in previous years with no problems; Gilder was taken aback to see a vendor giving away contraception for the first time.

“No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We cannot bring these home,” Gilder, now West Sabine school district’s superintendent, recalled thinking. “These are junior high kids. And we’re in a church.”

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In rural Sabine County, a part of Deep East Texas near Louisiana’s western border, Gilder knew many parents who would light up his phone if students came home with condoms from a school-sanctioned field trip. So before the students got back on the bus, Gilder told all of them to empty their pockets.

West Sabine High School students haven’t been back to the career fair since. The school district now organizes its own health fair, which parents attend, and school officials can decide whether contraception will be offered to the students.

“East Texans believe in and have a great deal of morality,” said Gilder, who graduated from West Sabine High School in 2002. “And, well, you have to include the parents.”

In Sabine County, pine trees outnumber the people. To commute between Pineland and Hemphill, the two towns that anchor the county, residents drive down a road that winds through a national forest. The towns are dotted with churches that loom large in daily community life. Bible scriptures are printed on plaques in local stores and even in Gilder’s office.

has shown access to contraception and comprehensive sex education prevents unplanned pregnancies. But for sexually active teens trying not to get pregnant in Sabine County, it’s hard to access either.

Sex education in Texas is taught amid tight parameters and bureaucratic strings. Texas schools have to offer health class at the middle school level, but parents must opt their children in to any lessons about sexual health. And when teachers do touch on sex education, state law requires them to stress abstinence as the preferred choice before marriage.

Even if teens in this region want contraception, it’s nearly impossible to get without parental consent. In small towns like Hemphill and Pineland, parents have eyes and ears everywhere, making teens reluctant to go to the local Brookshire Brothers or dollar store to purchase condoms. They could go to a family planning clinic, which provides contraception at little to no cost, but only clinics program do not require parental permission — and a federal judge in Texas that the program violates parents’ rights and state and federal law.

As , the nonprofit group that is the state’s Title X administrator, awaits guidance from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on how to proceed, it informed Texas providers this week to require parental consent out of precaution.

Today, family planning programs are few and far between, thanks to funding cuts by the Texas Legislature in 2011. No family planning clinic exists in Sabine County. To get to the nearest one, teens in the region must travel to an adjacent county.

Meanwhile, Texas has one of the in the country. And in 2020, Sabine County’s teen birth rate was the statewide average. Nearly 7% of Sabine County teenage girls between the ages of 15 and 19 gave birth that year, compared with about 2% statewide.

Evolving health education standards

In Texas, abstinence became the cornerstone of sex education in the mid-1990s when conservatives , insisting sex education was an inappropriate topic for teens. Then-Gov. George W. Bush signed a forcing school districts that offer sexual education to emphasize abstinence until marriage. The law allowed health educators to discuss contraception with students only if they spent more time emphasizing abstinence.

In 2009, the state removed health class as a high school graduation requirement, further minimizing the importance of health education. As a result, less than a third of Texas high school students took a health class between 2016 and 2020, according to an analysis of state course enrollment data by Healthy Futures of Texas, a nonprofit that works to reduce teen pregnancies.

In 2021, state lawmakers made it even harder for students to learn about safe sex. Now, parents must give written permission before their children can learn about “human sexuality,” , child abuse or sex trafficking. Texas is one of only in the nation, along with Nevada, Utah, Mississippi and North Carolina, to have such a requirement for sex education and the only state requiring parental permission to teach about child abuse.

Students whose parents allow them to attend sex education classes are still taught that abstinence is the “preferred choice of behavior.” But, for the first time in more than 20 years, the Texas State Board of Education in November 2020 voted to overhaul the middle school health curriculum standards. These students should now learn about contraception and sexually transmitted diseases, conversations previously reserved for high school health classes.

, the Lufkin-based chair of the State Board of Education, called the new requirements a “good middle ground” between comprehensive sex education — which prioritizes accurate and exhaustive information about contraception, sexual health and sexually transmitted infections — and an abstinence-only class.

Schools were scheduled to adopt these new standards by August of this year. But in Sabine County, as well as many others in East Texas, schools are sticking with an abstinence-based curriculum for middle school students.

Every few years, the Texas State Board of Education sets standards about what is to be included in teachers’ lesson plans, whether it’s social studies, math or health. These standards are known as the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, or TEKS. But no state agency tracks whether districts employ these standards. Students eventually take annual standardized tests on core subjects like math and science, but there is no such test for health.

“There’s no guarantee that every single TEK is taught to every single student,” Ellis said. “In the state of Texas, I’m sure some TEKS get skipped over, hopefully inadvertently, but probably in this case a little less inadvertently.”

When new health requirements for schools come from the state capital, districts turn to their to advise their local school boards about how to implement them. The councils, made up of parents and administrators appointed by the local school boards, are there to ensure that “local community values are reflected” in their school districts’ health education instruction. School boards tend to listen to their suggestions.

Inside a classroom at Hemphill High School this fall, members of the local advisory council struggled to navigate the new state requirements about sex education.

“Have we been able to decipher the bill yet?” Cecily Bridges, a Hemphill school nurse and the council’s chairperson, asked during the meeting. She turned to Stephen English, Hemphill Independent School District’s superintendent, for an assist.

“Not really,” English replied.

“It’s hard to interpret what we’re required to do,” Hemphill Middle School principal Jeremy McDaniel interjected.

At the end of the meeting, Bridges instructed committee members to read through the new laws and the updated curriculum before the next meeting. And she said she’d reach out to the district’s education service center for guidance.

Across the rest of religious and conservative Deep East Texas, some districts are choosing not to offer sex education to middle school students.

“I don’t care for the school to be teaching the kid sex ed. That’s my job,” one parent said during the health advisory council meeting for Chester ISD in nearby Tyler County in April. “I’ll do that.”

If a district is not complying with state standards, the only recourse would be for a parent to file a complaint with the school board. But that puts the responsibility of tracking district curriculums on parents who, in Deep East Texas, would often prefer to avoid sex education altogether.

In Hemphill, a town of less than 1,000 people, churches outnumber medical clinics. Wednesday night church services are part of the weekly rhythm. And religion has long been entangled in debates about sex education.

Some parents in this region clam up when the words “sex education” come up, said health educator Ashley Cook. She’s trying to get into the Hemphill schools to teach students about child abuse, teen dating violence and sex trafficking as part of her Lufkin-based nonprofit, Harold’s House.

But even Cook has to reassure school officials and parents that she will stick to euphemisms like “private parts,” even for middle and high school students.

“I don’t say the biological terms,” Cook said. “The schools are a little concerned about that, so I’m careful about how I use my language.”

Inconsistent sex education

Because sex education is voluntary, it’s not clear what Texas students know about sex and contraception. According to a , 58% of Texas school districts teach abstinence-only sex education while 17% teach an abstinence-plus curriculum that includes information about contraception. The remaining 25% teach no sex education at all.

Tenaha ISD in Shelby County — about 50 miles north of Hemphill — invited nonprofit Excellent Teen Choice to deliver abstinence-based lessons to students.

On a Friday morning in November, Excellent Teen Choice educator Eric Love, 47, launched into a class about sexually transmitted diseases as he stood before 10th graders at Tenaha High School.

“Did anybody know you could have sex and catch a disease? Isn’t that cool?” Love said sarcastically, his eyes wide and hands gesticulating wildly.

For 45 minutes, the high-energy instructor enthusiastically told students about the signs and symptoms of infections like gonorrhea, HPV and chlamydia. Students followed along in workbooks.

To demonstrate how widely the diseases can spread, students ran around the room collecting as many signatures as they could on index cards. Love then explained that each signature represented someone they had sex with.

Two students, unbeknownst to them, had tiny X’s printed on the corners of their notecards. That X, Love said, meant the student had a sexually transmitted disease.

“It’s living in their body and they’ve been transmitting the STD to other people, and they just don’t know it,” Love said.

He then had the two “infected” students stand at the front of the room and read the names on their cards. Now those students were infected, too, Love explained.

“I need you guys to understand the way this happened,” Love said. “Although this is a game, it’s not a game in real life.”

Love understood this personally. His half-sister became pregnant when she was in high school, an experience that inspired Love to educate young people about the consequences of premarital sex.

As students returned to their desks, Love flashed images on a screen at the front of the room. One showed pus-filled bumps on a male penis that made some students’ jaws drop. Another pictured an infected cervix, the narrow passageway between a woman’s vagina and her uterus. A student cocked his head and remarked that the fallopian tubes resembled frozen Tyson chicken wings.

Before students went on to their next classes, Love returned to his main point: abstinence. “It is our hope, our aim that you all will listen to this message: The best decision for your health, for your life, for your children’s lives is to save sex until marriage.”

Ninth grader Jasmine Santos said she was ignorant about STDs before the lesson.

“Now that I understand what can happen, I’ll probably say no [to sex] until marriage,” she said.

abstinence-only sex education or no sex education at all correlates with high teen birth rates. Medical experts, meanwhile, have championed comprehensive sex education.

When Brittany Henson, 33, attended Hemphill High School, she and her mother never talked about safe sex. The school district wasn’t teaching sex education, either. The gaps in her sex education were a byproduct of how little the town and the community had discussed the subject, Henson said.

“That is the culture of Hemphill. It is ‘Let’s not talk about it. It’s not a problem,’” said Henson, whose family has lived and worked in this town for generations. “People feel like it’s so wrong to talk about it. And like if you talk about it, ‘Oh, let me grab my shirt and button it all the way up to my neck because you shouldn’t be talking about these things.’”

Without formal sex education, Henson turned to other students. Their information was often incorrect.

“So, result? Hey, you got a baby,” she said.

Henson was in her junior year of high school when she got pregnant. She was on birth control but wasn’t taking her pills consistently and didn’t know that would raise her risk of pregnancy. She was, by no means, an anomaly. Five other girls in her high school class also got pregnant before graduation, she said.

Contraception access

Over the years, Valerie Polk has gotten very comfortable with subterfuge. Polk works at the only clinic in the region that has historically been able to prescribe birth control without parental consent, and she’s had to find creative ways to help young people protect themselves.

She’s met students off the highway, at the post office, on the bleachers during a high school football game and in the checkout line at the local Brookshire Brothers.

Once, in 2017, Polk wrapped contraceptive pills inside a Walmart bag and slipped the bag to a teen cashier at the local grocery store. The cashier laughed at Polk’s stagecraft before accepting the bag and putting it out of sight.

Valerie Polk, a public health worker at the Jasper Newton County Public Health District, describes the challenges of getting contraception to patients in a rural area.

“We do what we have to do to get our patients taken care of,” Polk said.

Polk has worked at the Jasper Newton County Public Health District for more than 25 years, providing health services to residents in Jasper and Newton counties as well as other nearby areas, including Sabine County.

The Jasper Newton County Public Health District is a federal Title X health care provider, one of 156 such clinics in the state. That has allowed Polk to give anyone birth control, free of charge. The Title X program has been one of the only ways minors in Texas can access birth control without parental consent. But last month, a Trump-appointed federal judge in Texas that Title X violates parents’ rights and state and federal law.

Legal proceedings are ongoing, but the state’s Title X administrator has instructed Title X clinics to stop giving out birth control to minor patients without proof of consent for now. The ruling has left Polk and her team in a bind. Starting this week, they now began requiring parental consent.

“This isn’t somewhere we’ve been before — where we really can’t help someone,” Polk said. “This is a new era for us. I just hope the ruling is overturned sooner rather than later.”

Already, over the past decade, the number of Title X clinics in the region has fallen, further impeding sexually active teenagers who want to avoid becoming pregnant. In 2011, there were four federally funded clinics in Deep East Texas. That number has been sliced in half, with just two clinics within a 100-mile radius of Sabine County. The Jasper Newton County Public Health District runs both those clinics — with one in Jasper and the other in Newton.

In Lufkin, a health care hub about 50 miles away from Sabine County, the Angelina County and Cities Health District suspended its contract with Title X in 2021, citing onerous requirements and paperwork. While the health district still provides contraception, teens must be 15 or older and have parental consent to receive it.

In 2011, in an effort to stop state dollars from flowing to Planned Parenthood’s health care clinics, Texas legislators — from $111 million to $37.9 million for the 2012-13 budget. Within three years, across the state shuttered, including those that were never affiliated with Planned Parenthood.

Some of the clinics that closed were also Title X providers. , which has administered the state’s Title X funds since 2013, has tried to rebuild the network of family planning services. But restarting services brings up a host of challenges.

“It’s a lot easier to close. It’s a lot harder to reopen a clinic,” said Stephanie LeBleu, the group’s acting deputy Title X project director. “We still see the legacy of that choice to cut family planning funding throughout the state.”

The Title X program has faced its own politically motivated attacks in recent years. Under the Trump administration, clinics that provided abortions or made abortion referrals were disqualified from the program.

Adding to the barriers to contraception access, the teens Polk wants to serve don’t even seem to know that Title X exists. Some teens who want birth control don’t know where to go for it. Few have formally been taught about sex. Those who have were instructed to abstain.

“The Bible Belt says, ‘No, we’re not going to talk to our kids about birth control,’” Polk said. “‘We’re not going to talk about premarital sex.’”

English, the Hemphill school superintendent, said contraception was not covered in the district’s sex education curriculum and he doubted students could access it if they wanted to.

Polk and her team have tried to get into the public schools to educate students about their options for contraception. But that’s been nearly impossible, she said.

“It may not be the superintendent, it could be the school board. It could be some parents that are going, ‘Oh, no, you’re going to tell my child about sex,’” Polk said.

What students do learn, Polk said, is often inaccurate information that comes from social media platforms like Snapchat or TikTok.

So Polk and her team do what they can to make themselves known in their community to address the misinformation. Outside of work, they wear health district T-shirts to raise its visibility. And when teenagers come in for appointments, Polk asks them to tell all their friends about their services.

Some doctors are also filling the gap left in education and access. George Fidone, a Lufkin pediatrician, said he speaks openly about sex with his adolescent patients and prescribes contraception on a weekly basis — but only with parental permission.

“I’ve had too many kids come in with their parents, and the parents think they’re coming in for a sore throat,” Fidone said. “And the kid will give me a look. And I’ll know that look is ‘I’m pregnant, and I need help with this.’”

Another thing that keeps teens from accessing birth control is that Texas is one of just two states that do not cover contraception through the Children’s Health Insurance Program, the insurance plan for low-income families. Also, state-funded family planning clinics require parental consent before minors can get contraception. Even a teenager who has had a baby cannot obtain birth control without parental consent.

Teen pregnancy

When Henson was a junior in high school, she bought an at-home pregnancy test from the local dollar store and took the test in her parents’ bathroom.

But after the two pink faint lines emerged, signaling she was pregnant, she didn’t call her mother. She didn’t call her older siblings who had already left home.

Instead, she initially kept quiet about her pregnancy. She took herself to and from doctors’ appointments. She continued to make straight A’s and work her job as a cashier at Brookshire Brothers. She said she even competed in the state track meet while five months pregnant.

“I just didn’t want to deal with the disappointment. … I wasn’t ready for that,” said Henson, who was an all-star athlete and a straight-A student. “I felt like I had the weight of not only my family, but the weight of my community.”

Hemphill and West Sabine school districts work with pregnant students to provide accommodations to get them to graduation, including homebound services late in the pregnancy. But teen moms are less likely to finish high school. Just over half of 20- to 29-year-old women who were teen moms have high school diplomas, according to a 2018 report from .

But after Henson gave birth to her daughter, she kept a firm grip on her dreams. She drove straight from the Jasper Memorial Hospital delivery room to the school athletics office to rejoin the school basketball team. She would go on to graduate high school on time and attend Sam Houston State University on a track scholarship.

Henson now lives in Hemphill. She’s worked as a nurse at the Sabine County Hospital. Her daughter, Bremyiah, now 16, attends the same high school she did.

Bremyiah is dating now, but Henson says she feels OK about it. She fiddles with a silver ring on her finger, emblazoned with the word “Mom” in cursive. She hopes she’s given her daughter the information to make the right decisions.

The mother and daughter talk about safe sex and contraception. Bremyiah doesn’t want to get on birth control, but Henson hopes her daughter can come to her if she changes her mind.

Last year, Henson drove Bremyiah to the gynecologist for the first time, an appointment where her daughter could get basic reproductive information from a doctor.

“What am I going here for?” Bremyiah asked as they were getting ready. “I’m not having a baby.”

“That’s the point. It’s to keep you from having a baby,” Henson said. “We gotta learn, we gotta learn.”

Reporter Eleanor Klibanoff, video journalist Jinitzail HernĂĄndez and data visualization fellow Caroline Covington contributed to this story.

Disclosure: Planned Parenthood, Sam Houston State University and Walmart Stores Inc. have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete .

This article originally appeared in , a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

The Clark County School District wants to make sex education mandatory unless parents explicitly opt their child out — a switch from the current process wherein parents must explicitly opt their child in to health education.

CCSD, the nation’s fifth-largest school district, declined to elaborate on its plans but included the proposal in a list of it plans to submit for the upcoming legislative session, which begins in February.

Nevada is one of where parents or guardians must give permission before students can enroll in sex ed. The others are Utah, Texas, Mississippi, and Arizona.

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State Assemblywoman Shannon Bilbray-Axelrod, a Democrat, introduced in 2019 which would have made sex education opt-out and required teaching statewide evidence-based and factual information about puberty, pregnancy, parenting, body image, and gender stereotypes.

The bill died in committee, but Bilbray-Axelrod plans to reintroduce it in the upcoming session.

Under state statutes, schools are only required to teach medically accurate sex education about AIDS.

Nevada ranked first in the nation for having the of primary & secondary (P&S) syphilis in 2020, the most current data available.

Only 17 states in America require sexual education to be medically accurate, . States’ definitions of what constitutes medically accurate sex education differ substantially nationwide — with some having health departments review the curriculum and others having the curriculum based on information from sources that medical professionals use.

The and the burgeoning public health crisis of have renewed interest nationally in expanding efforts to revamp sex education.

CCSD currently does teach .

“I’m not worried about CCSD,” said Bilbray-Axelrod, “but I am more worried about other counties.”

Without a statewide mandate more rural counties and at-risk populations like homeless youth or children in the foster care system, who face additional barriers to getting a guardian or parent’s signature, are left underserved.

Nevada consistently has the and has the highest rate of children nationally.

Both and have higher rates of STIs than their peers.

“There are homeless children who don’t have parents to opt in to sex education,” Bilbray-Axelrod said.

While 31% of Nevada high school students reported having sexual intercourse at least once, 44% did not use a condom, the only birth control method that prevents STIs,

Of the roughly 26 million new cases of STIs in the U.S., half are among people ages 15 to 24, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), but the CDC reports that medically accurate sex education can prevent HIV, STIs, and unintended pregnancy for teens and young adults.

Reported cases of gonorrhea, P&S syphilis, and syphilis among newborns () were all up in 2020 compared to 2019, and early data indicates the trend continued in 2021,

Bilbray-Axelrod’s 2019 bill wasn’t the only sex education-related bill in recent years.

In 2017, , which would have periodically updated course content to be medically accurate, was passed mostly by Democrats, and had , but was vetoed by then-Gov. Brian Sandoval.

“While local school boards and educators play an important role in sex education courses, the role of the parents in this system is most important,” said Sandoval in his veto statement.

If the issue does arise in the upcoming session, it will no doubt raise the ire of conservative groups, like Power2Parent, whose president and CEO Erin Phillips lobbied for that Sandoval veto.

Phillips acknowledged that vulnerable groups like the homeless and foster youth have a lot of needs, but said she doesn’t believe opt-out sex education is high on that list.

“That’s a solution in search of a problem,” she said.

At the national level, Nevada U.S. Democratic Rep. Dina Titus co-sponsored the ​​, which would require sex education curriculum to be comprehensive and medically accurate. Neither that bill nor a measure in the Senate has moved beyond introduction.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Nevada Current maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Hugh Jackson for questions: info@nevadacurrent.com. Follow Nevada Current on and .

DALLAS — J.R. Chester got pregnant the summer before her senior year of high school. A bright student with good grades, she gave birth, graduated, and was pregnant again when she arrived at college that fall.

She was a teen mom — like her mother, her grandmother, and her great-grandmother. Her school did not teach sexual health education, and preventing pregnancy was a foreign concept. Her sons are now teenagers.

“If you don’t know your options, you don’t have any,” said Chester, now a program director for Healthy Futures of Texas, a nonprofit sexual health advocacy and education organization. “Everyone was pregnant. And it just felt like: When it happens, it happens.”

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While teen pregnancies have declined in the state and across the country in recent decades, Texas continues to have at 22.4 births per 1,000 girls and women ages 15-19 — the lowest, in Massachusetts, is 6.1. Along with Alabama, Texas has . This fall, school districts across Texas are marking a shift to what educators call an “abstinence-plus” curriculum — the first time the state has revised its standards for sexual health education in more than 20 years.

Although districts may choose their own curriculum and teach more than the state requires, the state’s minimum health standards now go beyond focusing on abstinence to stop pregnancies and include teaching middle schoolers about contraceptives and about preventing sexually transmitted infections, such as (HPV) that has been linked to several cancers.

Previously, a 2017 report showed 58% of Texas school districts offered “abstinence-only” sexual health education, while only 17% offered curriculums that expanded beyond that. A quarter of schools offered no sex ed.

that sex education programs that teach about contraception are effective at increasing contraceptive use and even delaying sexual activity among young people. Abstinence-focused education programs, on the other hand, have not been shown to be particularly effective at curbing sexual activity among teens.

Whether Texas teens receive any sex ed at all, though, depends on whether their parents sign them up. While parents previously had to “opt out” of sex ed portions of their kids’ health classes, they now have to “opt in” for their children to receive those lessons. That means parents must sign and return a permission slip — a change some fear could lead to kids missing out not so much due to parental objections but because of lost forms and language barriers.

These changes in sex education come as the state ratchets down abortion access following the Supreme Court decision in June overturning Roe v. Wade, which guaranteed a constitutional right to abortion. Texas has one of the nation’s most restrictive abortion laws. The question of how schools educate young people about their sexual health and development has taken on new urgency now that many state governments have enacted abortion bans.

Health advocates say many women may have no choice but to carry a pregnancy to term and that has created a new class of haves and have-nots: those who have the knowledge, resources, and agency to protect themselves from getting pregnant, and those who do not.

Texas is big and diverse enough to need education policies that can be adapted for remote border towns and sprawling metropolitan areas — both of which have high rates of unintended teen pregnancy.

In 2019, the Texas Board of Education began rewriting the health education standards that had been in place since the 1990s. It kept in place stating “that there are risks associated with sexual activity and that abstinence from sexual activity is the only 100% effective method to avoid risks.”

, a reproductive health research organization, 39 states, plus the District of Columbia, mandate that sex ed classes provide information about abstinence, with 29 of them requiring that it must be “stressed.” Just 20 states and D.C. require that the classes provide information about contraception.

Under Texas law, sex ed must still present abstinence as “the preferred choice.” When schools teach about condoms and other forms of contraception, they must provide what Texas calls “human use reality rates” — or, as it is described in medical literature, “typical use” — that detail the effectiveness of those methods outside laboratory settings.

The changes taking effect this year primarily address if and when a Texas student learns about certain sexual health subjects. Under the state’s previous standards, Texas schools could teach about birth control methods beyond abstinence, but only in high school health classes, which are optional. Now, information about contraceptives, as well as more about STIs, is taught in middle school health classes, which are required.

In May, the Dallas Independent School District, , approved lesson materials to meet the state’s new requirements. But school officials here wanted to do more given the scope of the problem. Advocates say Dallas County has the highest rate of repeat teen pregnancies in the nation.

The district curriculum goes beyond the state minimum and includes gender identity and extra information about contraceptives, as well as a contract with Healthy Futures of Texas to teach an optional after-school program for high school students.

The previous curriculum was “very scientific” and “very dry,” said Dustin Marshall, a member of the school district’s board of trustees, and left out basic information about contraceptives, like how to put on a condom.

“One of the primary ways to reduce teen pregnancy and relieve generational poverty from teen pregnancy is to teach contraception,” he said. “Not to just assume that if you teach abstinence, every kid will obey. That’s a little too head-in-the-sand, from my perspective.”

Some critics say the state’s standards, while an improvement, are inadequate when it comes to consent and LGBTQ+ issues, including gender identity. The state board does require that schools teach about healthy relationships and setting personal boundaries for sexual activity.

Under Texas law, parents have the ultimate say over not only whether their child receives sexual health education, but also what is covered in those lessons.

For nearly 30 years, school districts have been required to create and appoint , tasked with reviewing and recommending health curriculums, including on sexual health. Most members must be parents and not district employees, so the content of sex ed classes can still vary widely by district.

Jen Biundo, senior director of policy and research at Healthy Futures of Texas, described a study she helped conduct asking parents and teenagers who they would prefer to teach teens about sex. While parents and teens ranked them differently, she said their choices were the same: schools, doctors, and parents. Health advocates point out that not all parents can or do educate their children about sex — and that many teens live in unstable situations like foster care.

Biundo said that when they asked teens where they learn about sex, the top answers were “my friends and the internet.”

Indeed, some parents, especially those who were teen mothers themselves, may not know about birth control or how to access it. “Where are the parents supposed to get the knowledge from?” Chester said. “Because they came through the same school system that didn’t teach sex ed, and all of a sudden they’re supposed to know what to teach their kids.”

“We are trying to end that generational curse of being uneducated,” she said.

(Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

Two Ohio state House Republicans introduced legislation last week that would force school boards to disclose to parents all “sexually explicit content” taught in the classroom.

At parents’ request, teachers would need to provide students with alternative instruction that doesn’t include this sexually explicit content.

The — introduced by Republicans Sara Carruthers and D.J. Swearingen — defines sexually explicit content as any description of or any picture, drawing, film, image, or “similar visual representation” depicting sexual conduct.

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The sponsors refused to specify what precisely they’re trying inform parents of that’s occurring in the classrooms.

The legislation also requires boards of education to notify students of any “change in the student’s services or monitoring” regarding their mental, emotional, or physical health and well-being. Likewise, it prohibits school personnel from “directly or indirectly encouraging” a student to withhold information from their parents regarding their mental or emotional health.

The legislation continues a pattern of Republican legislation on a state and national level seeking to restrict what’s taught in classrooms, especially as it relates to race relations, American history, gender, and sexual identity.

“I think the real issue here is just how vague the term ‘sexually explicit content’ is,” said Kathryn Poe, a public policy and digital communications manager with Equality Ohio, which advocates for LGBTQ interests.

Poe noted the bill makes no exception for health, biology or anatomy classes. The bill’s real point, Poe said, is to use the legislation’s vague language to chill speech about gender and sexuality in classrooms under guise of parental rights.

“We know who will be called out here — it’s LGBT people,” she said.

The newly introduced bill in Ohio is largely a copy of similar legislation recently in Virginia and Missouri. In Missouri, NPR the legislation goes as far as to criminalize teachers and librarians providing sexually explicit material to students, leaving librarians pulling books off the shelves to comply. A similar law passed the Pennsylvania Senate earlier this summer, to the Pennsylvania Capital Star.

Organizations representing the LGBTQ community in other states have also protested the legislation, arguing the laws are a means of marginalizing gay and lesbian voices and experiences in classrooms.

Some 36 states have introduced 137 bills designed to restrict teaching about race, gender, U.S. history and sexual identity, according to a from PEN America, which advocates for the freedom of expression in literature. Seven became law this year, and another 12 became law last year.

In Ohio, Republicans introduced , which forbids educators from teaching certain “divisive concepts” mostly related to race in America, past and present. Another, , includes the ‘divisive concept’ provisions but expands the proposal to also prohibit the teaching of “sexual orientation or gender identity” until it’s “age appropriate” (a point in time not specified by the legislation). Neither have passed as of yet.

The recent bill’s sponsors declined to specify what kinds of purported sexually explicit conduct or changes in student health monitoring they’re seeking to inform parents of. Instead, in a statement through an aide, they both said the legislation would bring teachers and parents together to “foster involvement.”

The General Assembly is set to return after the November elections to wrap up its legislative work before the term ends.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Ohio Capital Journal maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor David DeWitt for questions: info@ohiocapitaljournal.com. Follow Ohio Capital Journal on and .

What students learn in sex ed has taken on new urgency following the Supreme Court’s decision in June to reverse Roe v. Wade, leaving abortion access up to the states. And as the Texas Republican Party takes aim at what kids learn in school, that dynamic is front and center for many advocates.

Research indicates that comprehensive sexual education leads teens to  Most states, however, do not require schools to teach comprehensive sex ed, and new policy proposals and legislation in some states may limit the curricula already offered to students.

The , released last week, would ban“teaching of sex education, sexual health, or sexual choice or identity in any public school” and enforce policies embraced by anti-abortion movements, such as having students observe live ultrasounds and requiring schools to teach that life begins at fertilization. Students would also have to read a booklet that contained medically false risks about abortion.

Gaps in sex ed instruction in Texas and around the country could have life-changing impacts for students. This includes sexually transmitted infections and unplanned pregnancies they can’t legally terminate that make them vulnerable to . 

“Programs that don’t include high quality, inclusive sex ed are really harmful to young people,” said Gillian Sealy, chief of staff at Power to Decide, the campaign to prevent unplanned pregnancy. “We anticipate that [the Supreme Court] ruling will have a negative impact on young people. We really want young people to be able to finish school; we want them to get an education.” 

While elected officials don’t have to implement their parties’ platforms, Republican lawmakers in Texas could attempt to reframe the curriculum based on the newly released GOP agenda, sex ed proponents contend.

“It’s absolutely possible,” said Elizabethe Payne, a former Houston teacher and the founder and director of the Queering Education Research Institute, which works to create LGBTQ+ youth-affirming schools. “Texas education policy has always been impacted by the conservative right. These ideas all have been percolating for a number of decades in the state.”  

Representatives for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott did not respond to The 19th’s request for comment about the state’s plans for sex ed. Texas currently offers a sex ed curriculum, but it does not require instruction to be medically accurate, stresses abstinence, does not discuss consent and frames homosexuality negatively. Rather than opt their children out of sex ed instruction, Texas families must opt them in, a setup that sex ed advocates say will result in too few students taking such classes.

Comprehensive sex ed includes lessons on sexual behavior and sexual health as well as on human development and healthy relationships, according to the Guttmacher Institute. In comprehensive sex ed, instructional materials are medically accurate, LGBTQ+ inclusive and age appropriate. Most students nationally do not receive sex ed that’s this exhaustive, and the information they do receive depends largely on the state where they live.  

“What’s being delivered in classrooms around the country is a patchwork of policy and practice,” said Diana Thu-Thao Rhodes, vice president of policy, partnerships and organizing for Advocates for Youth, a nonprofit that promotes adolescent sexual health programs and policies. “All 50 states have varying different sex education requirements, if at all, and much of that power is then given to local school districts that also vary from district to district.”

While the District of Columbia and , only 17 states mandate that the material covered be medically accurate. Just D.C. and 20 states require schools to teach students about contraception. Twenty-nine states mandate schools to emphasize abstinence in contrast to comprehensive sex ed, which characterizes sex as a normal part of life. 

Advocates for comprehensive sex ed say that the push for lessons with an anti-abortion bent intersects with the national movement to prevent educators from discussing issues such as race, gender identity and sexual orientation. 

“Now, because of the recent Supreme Court decision, teachers and educators are already facing concerns about what they are allowed to teach, and what they are able to discuss in classrooms,” Thu-Thao Rhodes said. “That goes beyond the recent Supreme Court decision to the fact that schools have become the center of the culture wars across the board, whether it is around , whether it is around LGBT inclusion, whether it is critical race theory.” 

Limiting access to abortion exacerbates existing concerns about sexual health instruction in Texas, Thu-Thao added. In the months before the high court’s ruling, Texas took steps to  and has now implemented a functional total ban.

Texas ranks  ages 15 to 19, according to 2019 statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the most recent available. In 2005, Texas, along with New Mexico, had the nation’s highest teen pregnancy rate. That year, almost 62 births occurred per 1,000 Texas teens ages 15 to 19, but the teen pregnancy rate fell by more than 60 percent by 2019. Although this is a dramatic improvement, one that many attribute to efforts to teach kids about their reproductive health, the Texas teen pregnancy rate (22.4 per 1,000 teens) remains significantly higher than the national teen birth rate (16.7 per 1,000), which has been declining since 1991. The state still ranks .

“We’ve done such a good job bringing [teen pregnancy] rates down,” Sealy said. “And it seems as though we’re moving backward, where we could possibly see those rates increase, especially among communities of color and rural communities, where there’s economic disadvantages.”

Should the Texas GOP platform become a reality in the state, experts fear that unplanned pregnancies among teens could raise the high school dropout rate. About . Public schools often lack the funding and wraparound services needed to truly give pregnant and parenting teens the support they need, Sealy said. School districts are unlikely to have the resources to respond to an uptick in teen pregnancies that stem from abortion restrictions at the state and federal level. That’s why teens need access to contraception, Sealy said, but sex ed programs that exclude information about contraception and school health centers and insurance plans that don’t cover contraception both pose barriers. 

“If you’re in the Children’s Health Insurance Program, Texas is one of only two states that does not reimburse for contraceptives,” said Texas Rep. Donna Howard, a Democrat. She added that the barriers teens in the state face don’t end there. “If you are a teen, you can consent for health care decisions about your baby, but you cannot cannot consent for yourself if you’re a minor. You cannot get contraceptives without parental consent even if you’re already a parent.”

Teen pregnancies have ripple effects that touch the next generation. Not only are themselves, they also have increased odds of entering the child welfare and criminal justice systems, dropping out of school and facing joblessness as adults. Howard is particularly concerned about the impact a lack of sex ed and abortion access will have on vulnerable teens such as those in foster care, who have higher rates of pregnancy than their peers outside the system.

“Some of these kids are in a foster care situation where they have their babies with them, but a lot of times the baby is placed in a separate foster care home,” Howard said. “They’re not even kept together. It’s a tragic kind of situation.”

Howard would like to see Texas youth receive long-acting reversible contraception. In Colorado, teens and young people received intrauterine devices and implants through the state’s family planning initiative, which a private donor funded in 2008. The initiative led to . In addition, births to women without a high school education fell 38 percent and repeat teen pregnancies fell by 57 percent. 

Now that Roe has been overturned, scholars affiliated with the Johns Hopkins Center for Adolescent Health have joined the . They want district leaders to allow school-based health centers to provide contraception to students and schools to exclusively use comprehensive sex ed programs. 

Payne said that schools should also consider sidestepping mandates about what they’re permitted to teach by bringing in advocacy groups to provide medically accurate sex ed information. These groups may offer opportunities for students to get involved outside of school. Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas, for example, has a  in which they engage in peer-to-peer outreach on issues such as sexually transmitted infections, dating violence and pregnancy prevention.

But school will continue to play a major role in what the bulk of students learn about their sexual health. That’s why the Texas GOP’s new platform planks worry Howard, who questions if they’re scientifically sound. When life begins is far from settled. She cited Texas’ , one of a handful of laws across the nation known as “heartbeat bills” because they prohibit abortion after six weeks, the point at which their supporters argue that a fetal heartbeat can be detected. 

“There is no heart at that point in time,” Howard said. “There are only cells that emit electrical activity that can be picked up by a Doppler machine and translate it into the sound of a heartbeat.”

She added that she has no problem with students learning about all aspects of pregnancy, but she fears that the GOP wants to use ultrasounds to perpetuate “mythological ideas.”

Texas GOP spokesperson James Wesolek told The 19th that the party would not “offer any further comment on the platform beyond what was said in our ,” which explains the procedures the party uses to vote and adopt its policy proposals.  

The quality of sex ed, Payne said, is not just a Texas issue. She pointed out that in New York, where she now lives, sex ed is not mandated, materials are often outdated or include gender stereotyping that frame girls as the gatekeepers of sexual activity. 

“It’s really important for us to be aware that the lack of sex education is a nationwide problem,” Payne said. “Even if you’re educating students in a state where abortion is still accessible, that does not mean that those young people are going to go to college in that state or they’re going to grow up and find jobs in that state.”

Proponents of comprehensive sex ed are also concerned about the impact that Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law will have on sex education. That law took effect July 1, and it prohibits educators from teaching lessons about sexuality or gender identity to students in grades K-3 or to older students in a manner that would not be age appropriate. 

Payne said that this law and Roe’s reversal could have grave consequences for queer youth.

“It is important to know that  as their sexually active straight counterparts to be involved in an unplanned pregnancy, and this includes gay boys,” she said. “Abortion is a queer issue. 
 We can only imagine that the outcome is also going to be disproportionate on queer kids when they can’t access the kinds of health care they need.”

Just 12 states and D.C. require sex ed that includes the LGBTQ+ community, even though . Critics of Don’t Say Gay say that it is written intentionally broadly and reports have already circulated that LGBTQ+ educators have removed pictures of their partners for fear of violating the legislation and facing disciplinary or legal action. The law will inevitably affect what educators feel they can discuss in sex education, sex ed advocates said. Even before its enactment, Florida was one of just four states, including Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi, to require . 

This does a disservice to young people, according to Thu-Thao Rhodes. She said they deserve and need access to a full range of information about their reproductive and sexual health to make healthy decisions. 

“And what we’re seeing is law after law about what can be discussed in classrooms impacting their sexual health education and also their ability to affirm their identities and create safe and supportive environments in schools,” she said.

Murphy blamed the controversy on partisan actors attempting to divide parents. The governor’s announcement came after a parade of GOP legislators blasted the new standards and proposed legislation that would bar any instruction on gender identity and sexual orientation to young students.

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“I have directed my Department of Education to review the standards and provide further clarification on what age-appropriate guidelines look like for our students. My administration is committed to ensuring that all of our students are equipped to lead healthy, productive lives now and in the future,” Murphy said in a statement.

The controversy here comes as states nationwide seek to bar discussion of LGBTQ issues in the classroom, sparked by a new Florida law that limits instruction on gender and sexual orientiation.

The new New Jersey standards were adopted by the state Board of Education in June 2020 and are supposed to be implemented starting in September. They expand what students are taught about gender identity, sexual orientation, consent, and gender expression. 

Parents are allowed to opt their children out of sex education lessons in New Jersey public schools.

In his statement, Murphy pointed to politicians who are “seeking to divide and score political points” by misrepresenting how far the new standards go. State Sen. Holly Schepisi (R-Bergen) that she said “go so far as unnecessarily sexualizing children.” Officials say those documents are an example of what schools can use, and are not curriculum. Murphy said the materials Schepisi shared “do not reflect the spirit of the standards.”

Murphy said it’s paramount for public schools to promote inclusivity and respect for all children, including LGBTQ students.

“In New Jersey, parents always have and always will have a say in their child’s education, which includes opting their child out of any health lesson that they would rather discuss in the privacy of their own home,” he said. “Any proposed educational content that is not age-appropriate should be immediately revised by local officials.”

Schepisi said she is happy Murphy will provide more information to parents who are confused about the new standards. But she disputed the charge that she is spreading misinformation, noting the documents she shared can be found on the state Department of Education website. 

“Providing information to parents about what’s going on while the state gives a lack of guidance is not misinformation,’ she said. “Parents need to remain engaged and make sure their voices are appropriately heard.” 

GOP senators have sent a letter to Murphy and state Senate President Nicholas Scutari (D-Union) asking for public hearings on the new standards and delayed implemention. In the letter, they note the expanded guidelines were adopted in June 2020, at the height of the pandemic.

Republicans and some parents have taken issue with the apparently graphic nature of the proposed standards, and the age at which topics like gender identity, sexual orientation, and anatomy may be taught. 

State Sen. Vin Gopal (D-Monmouth), who chairs the Senate Education Committee, said he’s reviewed the documents at the heart of the controversy and hasn’t found anything that glaringly crosses a line. But he called on Murphy to reassure parents about the new standards.

Gopal called Murphy’s statement Wednesday a “step in the right direction.” 

The Department of Education did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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“We think that schools are the best place to reach the most children to talk about personal body safety,” said Altschiller, a Stratham Democrat. “And that is their right. They have the right to be safe.” 

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This year, Altschiller and a group of Democratic lawmakers say it’s time for public school classrooms to take it on: sexual assault education and prevention. House Democrats are advancing a bill that would require consent to be taught in New Hampshire public schools as part of a school’s health education curriculum. 

“The precedent for preventing harm and promoting well-being through education is clearly established,” said Rep. Amanda Elizabeth Toll, the Keene Democrat spearheading the bill. 

would require that schools include “age-appropriate instruction on the meaning of consent, respect for personal boundaries, and sexual violence prevention” in the basic curriculum for all students. 

At a hearing Tuesday, supporters of the bill said that the instruction would be valuable to head off incidents of violence and violation of personal space — both in adolescence and later in life. 

“We see the importance of smoking prevention education because of the damaging health effects: it’s important enough to be part of health curriculums,” said Emily Murphy, a prevention program specialist at HAVEN New Hampshire, a violence prevention center. “The negative health impacts of child sexual abuse and other forms of sexual violence are staggering.”

Alberto Soto, currently the director of counseling at Middlebury College in Vermont, said he had treated young adults on both sides of the equation: those who have caused harm and those who have experienced it. The trauma caused by a violation of consent can follow students for years, Soto said.

“The only way that we can help prevent harm is through education and through preventative measures,” Soto said. 

For Renee Monteil, consent lessons were already built into her parenting approach for her two young daughters. When one toddler would bite another, Monteil would teach them not to, framing it around consent. But when it comes to sexual health, Montiel said, the lessons are some that all students should receive. 

“Teaching consent is teaching life skills,” Monteil, of Keene, told lawmakers. “Teaching consent is also about giving all of our children the tools they need to navigate society safely. With confidence.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. New Hampshire Bulletin maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Dana Wormald for questions: info@newhampshirebulletin.com. Follow New Hampshire Bulletin on and .

At a meeting Friday, the Texas State Board of Education officially refused to recommend three health textbooks, including two books mentioned in this report. Board members voted along party lines to reject the middle school textbooks from LessonBee, Inc. and Human Kinetics that include sex education, with opposition citing content about masturbation and abortion, insufficient attention to abstinence or a lack of constituent support. A third health textbook for elementary school failed on a 6-6 tie. 

The culture wars keep coming in Texas, and the latest one involves sex, textbooks, and the LGBTQ experience. 

On Tuesday the State Board of Education will decide whether proposed textbooks that include content on gender identity and sexual orientation will make their way into the backpacks and laptops of children in Texas and across the country. 

Both sides are gearing up, the latest in a series of polarizing fights in Texas schools, which recently included school mask mandates, teaching about systemic racism and library books with sexual content. Just last week, Governor Greg Abbott wanted against educators offering “pornographic” books to students after pointing out two .

Now, after last year’s approval of new state standards for health classes, the board must approve new textbooks—and that’s where the new battlefront is.    

“Gay people can get married today; you can’t fire LGBTQ people because of their sexual orientation or gender identity,” said Dan Quinn, a spokesman for Texas Freedom Network, a left-leaning social justice group. 

While much has changed in the last few decades, he fears, “textbook adoptions in Texas have not.”

Conservative activists and parents have issues with all five of the health textbooks the board must approve, but are particularly focused on two for middle schoolers, saying they go too far by “normalizing” sexual activity, questioning gender identity and going beyond the new state standards. 

State law now requires parents to opt-in their children to lessons on sex education. Parents groups, like the Tarrant County Chapter of Moms for Liberty, a right-leaning organization focused on preserving parental rights, argue they want to be the ones instilling morals about sex to their children. They say the new textbooks would rob them of that right. 

“The attitude of devaluing family and oversexualizing education is detrimental to children, even adults, as well as harmful to society,” said Mary Lowe, Moms for Liberty Tarrant County chair.

This base has been galvanized. Loud groups of parents are fuming about what their children are being taught about systemic racism and, using that frustration as a road map, Republican Glenn Youngkin won the Virginia governor’s race by making critical race theory and schools key issues in his campaign.  

Red meat topics like inappropriate sexual content in schools are ripe for conservative Texas Republican politics ahead of the crowded March 1 GOP primary elections, said Rice University political science professor Mark Jones. 

In addition, political attacks like Abbott’s fit the narrative that liberal school boards are dropping the ball when it comes to educating the country, he added. And those are the people Abbott wants to show up at the primary election, he said.  

“It’s not what do average Texans think. It’s what does the average Republican primary voter think,” said Jones. When it comes to teaching about sex, he said, it’s “that nothing should be taught or the bare minimum.” 

Textbooks and Standards

Up until last year, the state’s teaching standards for health and sex ed hadn’t changed since 1997. After more than a year of public hearings and panels, the State Board of Education updated the standards in 2020, with the most significant change requiring seventh and eighth-grade students , including condoms and other forms of contraception. The new standards go into effect in August 2022. 

Progressive advocates urged board members to add topics like abortion, consent, gender identity and sexual orientation to the mandatory curriculum, but the heavily conservative 15-member board declined.

When it comes to high school, sex education is optional. Many schools don’t offer sex ed at all. State law requires those that do teach sex ed present abstinence as the preferred choice to all sexual activity, encouraging abstinence until marriage. 

A teacher can go further and offer an “abstinence plus” curriculum, but must devote more attention to abstinence from sexual activity than any other behavior.  

On Tuesday, the elected board will take an initial vote to recommend textbooks school districts could buy that cover the new standards. A final vote is expected Friday. 

How the final vote will play out is unclear. Several conservative members of the board who voted on the standards in 2020 have since left the policy-making body, replaced by Republicans who skew toward the center. Advocates for comprehensive sex education hope the shift will mean the two textbooks that teach beyond the standards will be approved as is.

Textbook publishers are not bound to those standards and will try to provide content they believe makes their books attractive to school districts in Texas and across the country. While waning, with more than five million students in Texas public schools, the lone star state makes up a giant share of the national textbook market and continues to have outsize influence on content. 

But parents like Lowe and advocates like Mary Elizabeth Castle believe the books violate the standards.

“The fact that so much public input and agreement among the board went into the standards, it would be transparent and the right thing to do to have the books aligned with the standards,” said Castle, senior policy advisor for Texas Values, an organization dedicated to preserving conservative family values.

While parents can yank their students out of sex ed instruction, groups like Texas Values last year convinced the board to keep LGBTQ content out of the standards and is frustrated it’s still showing up in textbooks.

In the textbook by Human Kinetics, Castle said the text uses two students engaging in sexual activity as an example in a lesson, and in another case has students question whether their gender identity is similar to the one they are assigned at birth. The other textbook, by LessonBee, Inc., includes a text message conversation about ejaculation and arousal.

Advocates for stronger sex ed say the textbooks are needed because students want medically accurate and age-appropriate information about sex.

“We want young people to be able to engage in sexual activity if and when they feel comfortable to do so, when they feel they have all the information they need to make that decision for themselves and for their future,” said Gabrielle Doyle, state partnership coordinator for Sex Ed for Social Change, a group in favor of the textbooks.

Texas Leads in Repeated Teen Births 

What to teach students in school, particularly when it comes to sex, is a touchy subject in Texas. The state has some of the highest . A baby is born to a teen mother every 23 minutes in Texas, according to Jen Biundo, director of policy and data at the Texas Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. And Texas is the top state in the country for repeated teen births. 

Texas has historically opted to promote abstinence among teenagers to reduce teen pregnancies. 

Despite whether more in-depth teaching about sex ed could be beneficial, Jones, the political science professor, said Republicans have little political incentive to encourage it. 

As a Republican, said Jones, “you’re not going to win any votes in an election by pushing a more progressive agenda on sex ed.”