Modesto City Schools narrowly passes 8th-grade sex ed curriculum. When will it start?
In a 4-3 vote, Modesto City Schools’ Board of Education passed the new sex education material that will be taught to eighth-graders.
“Teen Talk Middle School: A Comprehensive Sexuality Education Curriculum” was passed by the board Monday night with the stipulation that the district exclude demonstrations of putting on a condom and use of a dental dam.
The materials, published by Health Connected, will be taught to students starting in the upcoming school year. Before then, parents will have the opportunity to see the curriculum. The district said parents may opt out their children out from seeing the materials.
In April, Attorney General Rob Bonta sent a letter to the Modesto Pregnancy Center alleging the facility was providing inaccurate and biased sex education material and presentations to Modesto City Schools in violation of the California Healthy Youth Act, prompting the district to choose a new curriculum.
The California Healthy Youth Act, or CHYA, states that sex education should include objective information about abortion. The pregnancy center curriculum includes only one paragraph that mentions abortion. In addition, its list of Modesto-area health clinics does not include reproductive health centers that provide abortion services, such as Planned Parenthood and FPA Women’s Health.
In February, parents raised concerns with the school district over Modesto Pregnancy Center’s sex ed curriculum. Some parents filed a complaint with the California Department of Justice, leading to the Department of Justice’s involvement.
After examining three sex education curricula, a committee of high school health teachers recommended “Teen Talk, Middle School: A Comprehensive Sexuality Education Curriculum.” The district will be paying around $20,000 for the materials.
The new curriculum was chosen because “Teen Talk” follows the California Healthy Youth Act the closest, while the other options would require the district to supplement additional information.
“Over the past 10 years of practicing, I have seen a lot of my patients are not well educated in anatomy, sex health education, STD prevention in all our patients and all our gender diverse patients,” Margaret Howe, an OB-GYN who has two children in the school district, told the board in support of the new curriculum.
Some parents expressed concerns with the new sex education material, saying the materials went “too far.”
Dissenting parents said that students do not need to know how to put on a condom and learn to use a dental dam, that students shouldn’t learn about sexuality and gender and that the materials are not following religious doctrine.
This story was originally published June 4, 2024 at 3:05 PM.
