Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2004. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
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San Francisco Examiner - September 7, 2004
Bonnie Eslinger, Staff Writer
"It's all about giving the parents the right to remove their students from perceived questionable teachings that lie contrary to the values they teach in their homes," said Benjamin Lopez, lobbyist for the Traditional Values Coalition, a sponsor of Assembly Bill 1925.
San Francisco schools already offer parental notification for sex-ed speakers. Parents are also given information that explains what the health education program at their student's grade level will include. Trish Bascom, director of San Francisco Unified School District's health programs, said the district wants parents to be informed about the topics being taught in the classroom.
"We want to encourage them to continue the discussion at home," Bascom said. "It's the parents' responsibility, primarily."
California law requires school districts to provide HIV/AIDS education once in middle school and again in high school. Parents can choose to have their children opt out of the lessons by contacting the school.
Chris Berry, who directs sex education programs for the California Department of Education, said that about 2 percent of parents ask to excuse their children from sensitive sex-ed topics, but when they do it's usually because the discussion is around homosexuality. "There's misperception that schools are teaching kids to do that," Berry said.
That was one parent's complaint in San Francisco back in 1992, when two sixth-grade teachers at Everett Middle School brought in approved speakers to talk about violence against gays and lesbians. A student asked how gay people have sex and one of the speakers gave a brief, clinical description. The parent tried unsuccessfully to have the teachers' credentials revoked.
Ed Buckley, one of the teachers involved in that incident, said that he's never had more than a few parents choose to remove their students from sex education.
"The ones that are opting out are the Southeast Asians, where the culture demands that this [sexual education] is taken care of by the mother," Buckley said.
HIV/AIDS education includes talk about abstinence from intravenous drugs and sexual intercourse, but it also includes discussion about methods to reduce risk, according to the Web site of the Centers for Disease Control.
"In this state, you have sexual-orientation issues codified into the law and it's given a place in the classroom," Lopez said. "The Legislature have taken this state education system so far left that those in the right and the mainstream have to resort to legislations such as AB 1925 as a check that allows parents to have the absolute say."
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