May 19, 2022
By ELENA RIVERA
Cali Byrd is a junior at Booker T. Washington High School in Dallas. She remembers when a group came to talk to her class about sexually transmitted infections in eighth grade.
The talk involved a bunch of tennis balls with the names of STIs written on them.
“They had a couple of kids come up, put on gloves, and said, ‘If he throws the ball to her and she has a glove on, then she’s protected. But if she doesn’t have a glove on, then she’ll get the disease or something,’ ” Byrd said. “It was really weird.”
Byrd said the instructors never explained what the STIs were, just that people should wear condoms to prevent them. “It really was not helpful,” she said.
That was the last time she got any sex education curriculum in school, Byrd said, as it’s not mandatory once kids get to high school.
Instead, in 2020, Byrd started training to be a peer educator through Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas, where she learned details about STIs, and different methods of birth control. “It was a lot of catching up,” she said.
After more than two decades, the Texas State Board of Education is finally catching up too. It has updated the health curriculum, including sexual health, for elementary and middle school students. The new sex education curriculum, which will be taught starting in fall 2022, includes detailed information about birth control and STIs for the first time.
But it leaves out some key elements advocates wanted to see. And despite the state’s high teen birth rate, a recent policy change by Texas leaders made sex education curriculum opt-in, rather than opt-out, which means some kids might not get any instruction in schools at all.
Working to normalize sexual health conversations
The new curriculum comes after years of work from organizations across Texas that are trying to mainstream conversations about sexual health.
“Your reproductive and sexual health is really important for your life,” said Terry Greenberg, the founder of North Texas Alliance to Reduce Unintended Pregnancy in Teens. “Not only does it determine your personal health, it’s the health of your family. If you’re not giving kids that, you’re not equipping them to be adults.”
Teen birth rates across the country have been declining since 2007, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. But Texas is routinely in the top ten states with the highest teen birth rate, with 22.4 teen births per 1000 females aged 15-19, compared to California’s rate of 11 per 1000, or Vermont’s at 7 per 1000, according to 2019 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Advocates like Greenberg in Texas think better education about contraceptives and pregnancy prevention would help some of these statistics. Multiple research studies support this idea. Providing students with medically accurate and inclusive sexual health education can reduce unintended consequences like teen pregnancy and STIs.
“I mean, any unintended pregnancy is kind of on us,” Greenberg said. “Why didn’t we supply people with what they needed?”
The new curriculum is still abstinence-first, but including detailed information on contraceptives and STIs is a win for Greenberg and statewide advocates at the Texas Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy.
An educator in Dallas holds an instructional device at the North Texas Alliance to Reduce Unintended Pregnancy in Teens. The group offers
sex education to young people to equip them to be adults.
Keren Carrión/KERA
“These standards hadn’t been updated since Titanic was out in theaters,” said Jen Biundo, director of policy and data with the organization. “It had been a minute.”
But the new curriculum still leaves things out. It does not include instruction on consent, gender or LGBTQ+ topics. Those omissions reflect a larger battle for control over what information kids can access, that’s seen book bans, pride events and trans youth targeted by lawmakers.
There’s also a new policy from the legislature that requires parents and caregivers to opt-in to health education, rather than opt-out. That means the default is that kids don’t get taught about sexual health, puberty or reproduction, unless parents give permission. Texas leaders, including Gov. Greg Abbott, said parents should have control over what their children learn in schools.
Texas is now one of less than six states across the country with an opt-in policy.
Biundo said she’s concerned that one missed piece of paper or email will mean that some kids won’t get this instruction at all.
“When I think about the paperwork that I’ve fished out of my child’s backpack three weeks late, this kind of terrifies me,” she said.
“The big concern with the opt-in policy is that some kids will just slip through the cracks,” Biundo said. “Maybe they’re not living with a parent or guardian, or maybe they don’t have a parent or guardian who’s closely engaged. Those might be the kids that need this information the most.”
Greenberg says opt-in policy is a “huge logistical barrier for kids.” “Do you really care about the reproductive health of these kids? You have to give them information,” she said.
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