Ft. Myers News-Press, January 18, 2010

“Aspects related to sexual abstinence are intertwined within a number of the topics” covered in the health class required for students to graduate from Florida public schools, said Lee County Assistant Director of Curriculum Services Patti Elkin.

The class is abbreviated HOPE (Heath Opportunities in Physical Education) and it’s worth one credit.

In addition to general health topics such as prevention of disease and injury, stress and loss, lessons about puberty, human growth and development, pregnancy from conception through birth, and reproductive systems are taught. Personal responsibility is stressed as is healthy relationships, dating, sexual abuse, sexually transmitted diseases, sex in society and other topics. Neither “contraception” nor “birth control” appears on that list.

The subjects are “described in the district’s academic plan and support the state of Florida’s Sunshine State Standards,” Elkin said.

However, there is no law about what public school students should be taught about sex education in health classes, said Wendy Grassi of the local Planned Parenthood chapter.

For the third time, in March, the Healthy Teens Act will be introduced in the state Senate, Grassi said. Should it pass, it would require that any school teaching anything about “family planning, HIV, etc.” and receiving state funds would also have to “teach a comprehensive, medically accurate and age appropriate sex education, including information on contraception.”

Contraceptive information available from abstinence-only programs is confined to risk and unreliability.

Health Department

“There are many different means of communicating with children about their sexuality,” said Lee County Health Department Director Dr. Judith Hartner. “They can be abstinence-based, education-based, medical programs, self-esteem programs. I think there’s a place for all of them.”

“The most important thing is that we don't want boys or girls to be sexually active until they are ready, until they understand the risks of disease, of pregnancy,” Hartner said.
The Health Department will bring programs to schools if asked, but most of its work with teens is done at its offices, with young people seeking help.

“We urge abstinence but we also provide information on contraceptives, as the teen indicates,” Hartner said. “Most of the teens who come here are concerned about having a sexually transmitted disease and they are already sexually active.

“We try to get the parents involved. But sometimes kids don’t want to do that. And if it is in our clinical judgment that the kid is at risk without contraceptives, we provide them.”

By Dayna Harpster