An HIV-prevention program will not include lessons on condoms at a Carroll County alternative school for troubled teenagers, where pregnancy has been increasing, officials said.
Gateway School principal Bob Cullison and the county?s Health Department wanted to start a course called Making Proud Choices that stresses abstinence but also teaches how to use condoms, which county school board members said needed to be changed to fit with the county?s abstinence-based policies.
“The real issue we?re trying to address at the Gateway School is the cons of risky behavior: HIV, AIDS and STDs,” said Steve Johnson, Carroll?s assistant superintendent of curriculum. “We?re not at all interested in condoms.”
“It just would need so many modifications in order to meet our standards, and we have an abstinence-based program in Carroll County, that it just wouldn?t be worth it,” Johnson said.
Superintendent Chuck Ecker said they will consider teaching abstinence at Gateway, which offers online health classes.
Students at the school in Westminster are often more sexually active than other students and at a higher risk to contract sexually transmitted diseases or become pregnant to begin with, said Cindy Marucci-Bosley, women?s health program manager at the Carroll Health Department. About 12 percent of girls at Gateway reported being pregnant last year, Cullison said.
Last year the board also failed to act on a recommendation from its Family Life Committee, made up of health teachers, parents and students, that it teach birth control to eighth-grade students.
Baltimore City and Baltimore and Howard counties teach students about birth control in eighth grade, but Carroll, Harford and Anne Arundel counties wait to teach it until students reach high school.
