Louisville Sex Education Now (LSEN) held a rally to promote comprehensive guidelines for sex education in JCPS outside the VanHoose Education Center on August 1.
LSEN is a coalition of organizations such as ACLU of Kentucky, Black Lives Matter Louisville, Planned Parenthood and The Fairness Campaign.
LSEN hopes to add abstinence, contraception, LGBTQ health and identity, domestic and sexual violence awareness, consent and healthy relationships to the county’s health guidelines and wants to make sure that students learn both age-appropriate and medically-accurate material.
Kennedy Stephens, a 2013 Manual graduate, said, “The guidelines that JCPS currently has are pretty vague.”
Currently, the Kentucky guidelines for seventh-grade sexual health classes are that students must be able to “analyze decisions that impact an individual’s emotional, sexual, and reproductive health (e.g., describing benefits of abstaining from sexual activity: preventing pregnancy, preventing STDs, maintaining self-esteem).”
In eighth grade students must be able to “explain the benefits (preventing pregnancy, preventing HIV/STDs, maintaining self-esteem) and strategies (e.g., using refusal skills, talking with parents, doctors, counselors) of abstaining from sexual activity.”
For high school, the guidelines mention sexual health standards twice. According to the guidelines, students must be able to understand that “decisions regarding sexuality have short and long term consequences and responsibilities,” and be able to explain “how decision-making relates to responsible sexual behavior (e.g., abstinence, preventing pregnancy, preventing HIV/STDs), impacts physical, mental and social well being of an individual.”
Chris Kolb, the JCPS board member from District 2, said, “Which school you happen to attend should never ever determine the quality of the education that you receive. And I believe that as a school board member, I have a responsibility to insure that kids have accurate and scientific information about health.”
Advocates of LSEN cite that Kentucky has the seventh highest teen birth rate in the U.S. with 32.4 births per 1000 teenage females.
“I didn’t get sex ed at home, and I didn’t get sex ed at school. I actually interned teaching sex ed,” Sara Hall, the Master of Ceremonies for LSEN, said. “I realized that at that age I was missing so much information and that maybe had I gotten that information earlier in life, I could have avoided a few mistakes and made healthier choices.”
The Alley Theater joined LSEN’s protest with their mobile theater, known as The Arts Caravan, made from a donated TARC bus.
Scott Davis, who is producing director for The Alley Theater, said, “Anything that’s pro-education we want to support.”
“This has been a real grassroots movement so really a lot of people in the community have been involved. A lot of volunteers put a lot of time into this effort,” Hall said.
Dale Grider • Aug 4, 2017 at 1:29 pm
My concern as a Christian parent is not that my daughter learn about abstinence, or birth control strategies, or medical sexual health. My concern is that a liberal progressive agenda that is going to delve into LGBT issues is going to be one that will feel it has the right, if not obligation, to indoctrinate my daughter with respect to controversial moral values that are hotbed issues within our culture. I, as a parent, do not want public education subjecting my child to leftist progressive political/cultural propaganda. It’s not what I pay taxes for that fund the public schools and its not the school’s job to push a leftist outlook on my child. If they are going to insist on feeding a leftist LGBT perspective fed to students, then they need to balance that within PUBLIC education to offer classes that teach Biblical sexual values as well. (and dare I say Islamic ones too in terms of sexual morality and mental health).
Lynn wyatt • Aug 2, 2017 at 5:22 pm
With education come responsibility and power our students need accurate Sex Education to in power themselves to make strong choices. Great article