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Families who wish to have sexual health education taught in Battle Ground Public Schools will have an option next school year as the district board of directors voted to approve an elective course for next school year.
The board voted 4-1 to approve a “Health with Comprehensive Sexual Education” course during their Jan. 13 meeting. Board member Tina Lambert was the lone dissenting vote.
The course was one of a dozen up for board consideration to approve that evening, though given the past months’ of meetings the course containing sex ed stood out. In October the board had voted to change district policy so it did not require any sex ed other than a fifth-grade unit on growth and development and state-mandated education on HIV/AIDS.
Two months later, the board voted to allow for sex ed in elective courses, which served a twofold purpose of allowing current courses about health occupations, anatomy and psychology to not be barred per board policy, while also allowing for the potential of a health class with a sex ed component.
BGPS Spokesperson Rita Sanders said the approval was for offering the course; the actual curriculum was something that would have to come back to the board for its own affirmative votes to be put into use. Part of the curriculum listed in a course description had already been approved, that of what was found in the “Essential Health” textbook the district uses, which did not include sex ed.
Should the board approve the sex ed part of the curriculum it would be based on what was designed by the district in the months leading up to the eventual decision by the board not to approve it as a mandatory course. That curriculum had topics including anatomy, reproduction and pregnancy, puberty and development, self-identity, prevention of pregnancy and sexually-transmitted diseases (STDs), HIV/AIDS, healthy relationships, and state laws.
Sanders explained that the elective health course with sexual health would fulfil the same graduation requirement as the default one not featuring the unit, “so parents and students can choose from either course,” she explained.
As to why the district brought back a sex ed unit after dropping a required course, Sanders pointed to the segment of the student population whose families wanted some type of the unit offered. She pointed to a 2018 survey featuring more than 2,100 responses where only a quarter of responses answered questions pertaining to what they would like to “opt-out” of should comprehensive sexual education be approved.
“The majority of people wanted each of those learning standards taught, to varying degrees,” Sanders said. She stressed that no student would be forced to take the course, only those who wished to opt-in.
“It’s an elective that provides more options,” Sanders said.
As of Jan. 16 Sanders said that an approval of the missing curriculum had not been placed on a future meeting agenda yet. The board’s next meeting is scheduled for Jan. 27.
