A Carroll school committee wants to expand sex education to include contraception and sexually transmitted diseases ? a move rejected by the School Board last school year.
The decision follows stories The Examiner published detailing teen sex parties in Carroll County.
“The more the kids are informed, the better off we are,” said Ann Edwards, a Westminster resident with two children in the school district. “We can?t walk around with blinders on.”
She attended the Family Life and Human Sexuality Committee meeting Thursday night where copies of The Examiner?s story on sex parties was distributed.
The committee plans to present the proposal that expands the current abstinence-based, middle-school curriculum to the School Board.
“Abstinence is not what our children are practicing,” said Debbie Middleton, manager of Carroll County?s Communicable Disease program, at the meeting. “If they are not going to be abstinent, they need to know what is facing them.”
Maryland school districts have the option of teaching about contraception as early as seventh grade. In an informal survey of 19 Maryland counties, 10 school districts said they teach seventh- or eighth-graders about contraception and STDs, said Brian Griffith, a specialist for comprehensive health education for the Maryland State Department of Education.
Carroll County has an opt-in policy, which requires parents to sign permission slips allowing students to participate in sexual education.
“The feeling was that because of the conservative nature of this county, that was the right thing to do,” said Linda Kephart, school system supervisor of health and elementary physical education.
The Maryland State Department of Education does not track how many county school systems require students to opt in or opt out of sexual education.
