Sex education will be absent from Forth Worth ISD classrooms the rest of this school year after the Texas district’s new health curriculum succumbed to pushback from some parents and political leaders.
The district spent about $2.6 million in April to buy the new curriculum from HealthSmart, according to The Texas Tribune. But last week, Pat Hardy, a Republican member of the Texas Board of Education, criticized the district in a Forth Worth Star-Telegram for not listening to parents or following state rules on sexual education.
She said Fort Worth ISD’s School Health Advisory Council adopted the curriculum during meetings that were not sufficiently publicized and, therefore, the public was kept in the dark about the process.
HealthSmart’s curriculum violates Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (also known as TEKS) because it uses the terms “body with a vagina” and “body with a penis” instead of “female” and “male,” Hardy wrote. She also found fault with HealthSmart’s focus on “affirmative consent,” that “teaches students to negotiate for sexual activity,” Hardy asserted. Texas’ sex education standards teach refusal skills—rather than consent—in an effort to help students avoid the risks of sexual activity and sexually transmitted diseases, she said.
“The State Board of Education worked hard to ensure that state laws requiring an emphasis on abstinence until marriage were met … while also providing medically accurate, age-appropriate information about sexual health beginning in fourth grade,” Hardy wrote. “The Legislature worked hard to ensure parents are involved in the review and adoption process of curriculum and that they have the opportunity to opt-in for their children to participate.”
Fort Worth ISD’s School Health Advisory Council is now awaiting the school board’s approval to begin reviewing alternative sex ed curriculums. “There is not an approved, adopted or recommended Human Sexuality Curriculum for the 2022-2023 school year,” Fort Worth ISD Superintendent Angélica M. Ramsey—who has only been on the job since September—wrote in a Jan. 27 weekly newsletter posted online by the Forth Worth Report. “The delay will suspend the instructional delivery of the sexual education unit for the 2022-2023 school year.”
Beyond Forth Worth ISD
Oklahoma lawmakers have introduced two bills to restrict sex ed in public schools. One bill would require parents to opt into sex ed, rather than having them opt out. The other proposal would ban sex education entirely, KTUL reported. And legislators in Indiana and Wyoming are considering passings laws modeling on Florida’s so-called Don’t Say Gay bill, which, among other restrictions, prevents teachers from discussing LGBTQ+ topics.
Meanwhile, lawmakers in Illinois are considering a bill that would mandate sex education in the state’s schools but allow parents to opt out, according to Shaw Local. Many districts in the state had previously rejected the National Sex Education Standards curriculum the state intends to adopt.
Nationally, 37 states require that abstinence be taught in sex education and, in 18 states, teachers have to provide information about birth control. Sex education must be medically accurate in 18 states and age-appropriate in 26, according to Planned Parenthood.
But only 10 states require that schools cover LGBTQ+ identities and relationships in sex ed while six southern states either ban discussions of LGBTQ+ issues or actually require teachers “to frame LGBTQ+ identities and relationships negatively,” Planned Parenthood says.