District’s sex ed program an issue in school board race

Teresa Hinds

Wednesday, Oct. 30, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

Sex and politics are adding interest to the Clark County School Board District A race.

While candidates Cynthia Kimball and Mary Beth Scow share a concern for the high teenage-pregnancy rate and offer solutions to address the issue, one candidate is espousing the guilt-by-association theory.

"I'm concerned that my opponent has been on the sex education committee for years, yet we have one of the highest teen-pregnancy rates in the country," Kimball said.

"We definitely need a better sex education program. There are HIV-positive kids in our district and a significant number of students in high schools that are HIV positive. We need to address that issue seriously right now," she said. "Keeping them ignorant isn't helping the situation. We need to educate them."

Scow, who has served for eight years on the committee, defended the curriculum-choosing body and explained the sex ed committee is only in charge of choosing the material, not teaching it.

"The weakness is in making sure it's being taught," she said. "Sometimes, teachers are a little bit shy about teaching" the approved curriculum and fielding student questions.

"There is some fantastic material to be used," she said. "Actually, the teachers aren't aware of all the kinds of materials. It's a difficult process to find out about all the information available."

Scow reported that administrators are "making strides" in streamlining the process and making the materials more accessible to teachers, but she said the community needs to be more involved in reducing the teenage-pregnancy rate.

"There needs to be a community type of responsibility. We need to try and help families address this and make it a priority so we're teaching the kids the risks of premarital sex."

Getting the community more involved in education is one of several things the candidates agree on.

Kimball, a special-education facilitator at Gibson Middle School, advocates School to Work programs, which she said are "critical" in addressing both the teenage pregnancy and high school dropout rates.

As Kimball sees it, the two issues are interrelated. "Many of the kids who drop out are the young girls that are pregnant and the young men that get them pregnant."

"We have to have students involved and motivated to stay in school. We need courses that are practical to keep them in school. School to Work is an absolutely imperative program. We need to have kids go in and understand how to get a job," Kimball said.

Kimball also favors more vocational schools such as VoTech and ATTC for students interested in pursuing jobs that do not require a college education. "Less than 20 percent of (Clark County) high school students go on to college. We can't let those kids go and limit their opportunities."

Scow also favors involving the community in reducing the dropout rate.

"The dropout rate is a huge problem, and the growth rate is not helping that issue," she said. "Some of the families in our society are not helping, either. These issues need to be addressed by the whole community."

Community support is also needed to fund construction of new schools, she said.

" Go to the community and ask the city entities to try to get a community effort involved, to get developer help," she said. "If we can pull in more community support, get a community task force or community advisory committees together and pull in senior leaders and other community leaders, if we can all work together, we can do it better."

Lobbying the Legislature for money to fund school construction is a must for Kimball and Scow.

"We need to go to the Legislature and ask if there are other ways we can go about funding the schools," Scow said. "It's so hard to come back with bond issues all the time."

"Even if the bond issue does pass, we need to go to the Legislature," said Kimball. "If the (school district) lobbyists -- we have two of them -- really want to do something for this school district, they need to make sure that we as a state start paying for schools, whether it be through impact fees or how we decide to do that.

"There are 40 states in this nation that pay for schools like this. We are one of 10 states that does not. If those lobbyists don't get that pulled off, we're wasting a lot of money" for their salaries, she said.

The candidates also espouse getting "back to the basics" in the classroom, favoring the traditional approach to teaching -- reading, writing and arithmetic. For Kimball, a mother of five, that concept also extends to discipline in the classroom.

Scow says conflict of interest is a big issue in the race.

"The biggest difference is that she is a teacher who is not planning to quit her job if elected," said the mother of nine.

"She would have a huge conflict of interest. There are many things she wouldn't be able to vote on, such as negotiations with contracts and anything dealing with the teachers. That's a big concern."

While Scow said she has had "many people" voice concern to her about a potential conflict of interest if Kimball is elected, Kimball said the issue has become "less and less a problem" with the people she has talked with.

"Once they see I'm an independent thinker, I'm extremely articulate and get my points made, they don't seem to have a problem with it," she said.