Dive Brief:
- The Tucson Unified School District is working on a comprehensive sex education policy, but it had to strike a line about the curriculum being inclusive to the LGBT student community because of state law.
- The Arizona Daily Star reports the new policy calls for a medically accurate, age-appropriate curriculum that covers anatomy, reproduction and related biology, along with types of contraceptives as a way of preventing pregnancy and STD/STI transmission.
- The curriculum will also include units on bullying, dating violence and consent, but because state law prohibits teachings that "promote homosexuality," it cannot have units about gender identity.
Dive Insight:
Parents in Tucson will have to give permission to expose their students to the new curriculum, which may tamp down on some of the opposition expected to it. Parents in Washington state are currently opposing new education standards that would introduce discussions of gender identity as early as kindergarten. An online petition has 4,460 signatures in favor of removing the controversial topics from state standards entirely, though individual schools are free to shape their curriculum as they see fit.
The Obama administration has demanded all elementary and secondary schools allow transgender students to use the bathrooms that correspond to their gender identity or risk being held accountable for violating anti-gender discrimination policy Title IX. Kansas has said it will ignore this directive, and almost a dozen states are suing the administration for what they call an overreach. It is unclear whether the next administration will expect schools to be as inclusive as this one has.