School cuts sex aspect from awareness project

Molly Ball

Tuesday, Nov. 30, 2004 | 11:01 a.m.

This year the local observance of World AIDS Day will include a program at a Las Vegas high school, a very unusual occurrence.

But because of the eternal controversy surrounding sex education, the students won't hear about the sexual transmission of AIDS or the different ways they can protect themselves.

"We decided to take it as a social issue, not a sex-ed issue," said Liberty High School U.S. government teacher Laura Gault, the school's student council adviser. The council about a month ago decided to make AIDS the subject of its annual social awareness campaign.

In separating the "social issue" of AIDS from any information about sex, "We just decided to be cautious, the administrators and I," Gault said.

But local AIDS workers say the Clark County School District's sex education policy is so conservative that it may be leading to inadequate awareness of safe sex.

"It's extremely frustrating getting into schools," said Jen Roberts, director of programs for Aid for AIDS of Nevada, or AFAN. In working with Liberty on the council's awareness program, Roberts saw many of the students' plans get "squashed," she said.

Other attempts to support schools' AIDS education efforts have been fruitless, she said. "It's just a huge barrier," she said. "Seventy percent of the teens infected (with HIV) are girls. Who's missing the message?"

AFAN would have liked to bring HIV-positive speakers to the school's social studies classes to speak from personal experience and also to humanize AIDS victims and dispel the stigma that surrounds them, Roberts said.

But that was not possible. According to school board regulations, sex ed may be taught only by a qualified health teacher or school nurse. No third-party speakers are allowed, and all materials must be approved by the Board of Education.

"We do have a very conservative, strict curriculum, and it does have very specific guidelines," said Agustin Orci, the district's deputy superintendent for curriculum.

Since 1988 the school district's sex-ed guidelines have specified that the curriculum be "abstinence-based," said Christy Falba, who directs the district's math, science and technology curriculum. That agenda originates with the Board of Education, she said.

Students are exposed to information about human development throughout elementary school, including, in fifth grade, the traditional gender-separated lecture on body parts.

Health class, which includes sex ed, is required for one semester in eighth grade and one in high school. Parents must give permission for their children to take the classes.

The sex-ed curriculum is developed with the help of a permanent committee that includes parents, students, a teacher, a counselor and a physician.

"At the high school level, contraceptives are discussed, including the pros and cons," Falba said. "In terms of disease prevention, you can only be 100 percent sure with abstinence -- that's the way it's presented."

To Roberts, those guidelines are unrealistic when, according to statistics, Nevada has the highest teen pregnancy rate in the country.

According to a 2003 survey by the federal Centers for Disease Control, 46 percent of Nevada high school students had had sex and 33 percent were "sexually active" -- they had had sex in the past three months.

"Teens are extremely sexually active," Roberts said. "But we can't get in to talk to the kids about AIDS or sexually transmitted diseases in the Clark County School District."

The school board does a good job balancing the different perspectives of its diverse population, said DJ Stutz, president of the Nevada PTA.

"The Nevada PTA and the national PTA are very aware of the health threat that comes from all STDs, including AIDS," Stutz said. "We support the education being out there, but we also support the rights of parents to say how that education is being delivered."

Stutz said she supported the no-speakers rule because, several years ago, one of her sons was exposed to an "alternative lifestyle" speaker who gave graphic descriptions of homosexual acts and even bestiality.

Because of that "bad experience," she said, she arranged to have her youngest son take his health requirement online "so that I could have a greater influence on what was being taught."

The "virtual" course was a perfect solution, she said. "We were able to work our priorities and our values into it," she said.

Stutz noted that in 1987, the Nevada Legislature passed a statute requiring AIDS education in schools, but never voted for specific funding to address the issue. The PTA supports increased funding devoted specifically to AIDS education, she said.

But all sex education needs to be balanced, Stutz said. "When we talk about safe sex and using condoms, we have to make sure they know that there are some diseases condoms won't protect them from," she said.

At Liberty High, the students weren't necessarily prepared for the tight restrictions that would be placed on their civics project. But after they took up Gault's suggestion to make World AIDS Day the subject of the project, they started asking "funny" questions, she said -- questions about sex.

A flurry of e-mails went back and forth among teachers and administrators, Gault said.

But Gault said she thought the "separation" of the AIDS issue from any discussion of sex was appropriate. "I think that there's so many aspects of AIDS to deal with, and the social issues are just as important as the sex issues, in terms of politics and foreign policy," she said.

Gault said she didn't believe such an approach risked painting AIDS as an abstraction or something only present in other societies.

"I heard some of the disappointment in the voices when I talked to the people at the Health District and AFAN," she said. "But I explained to them that our job is not to raise the kids. Our job is to educate the kids, and some things should be decided at home."

The high schoolers made posters and giant red ribbons and put them up around the school, Gault said. They will wear donated T-shirts all day and hold seminars in social studies classes. The Names Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, on loan from a national foundation, will spend the school day in the cafeteria.

"Look, we are in an extremely conservative district," Gault said. "We have to recognize that even though we're in a very liberal town, we're an extremely conservative district."

To Roberts, AIDS awareness in all its forms shouldn't be political. But the schools' attitude, she said, amounts to "HIV is something we don't see or talk about, so it doesn't exist."