Sex education bill stirs debate in Albany

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Sex education bill stirs debate in Albany

By Cara Mathews and Alison Bert, The Journal News (Albany, New York), February 19, 2006

ALBANY — Does sex education encourage sexual activity, and does abstinence-only instruction withhold critical knowledge from those who need it?

Those are the core issues in a debate over proposed legislation that would encourage schools to provide "age-appropriate and medically accurate" sex education.

"We have to realize that young people are having sex at an earlier age," said Sen. Nicholas Spano, one of the sponsors. "We can't afford to keep our heads in the sand."

But the Catholic Conference of New York State sees it differently.

"The contraception education, we believe, is based on faulty assumptions, and one of them is that teenage sexual activity is inevitable," said Kathleen Gallagher, a spokeswoman for the organization.

Groups that believe it is unrealistic and unhelpful to focus only on abstinence are pushing for the Healthy Teens Act, which would emphasize abstinence but does not ignore teens who already are sexually active.

Teen pregnancy rates have declined nationwide. Ninety-one of every 1,000 New York girls ages 15 to 19 got pregnant in 2000, higher than the national average of 84 and putting New York behind only 13 other states, according to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy. From 1992 to 2000, the rate fell 24.2 percent in New York and 24.7 percent nationwide. In 2003, 40,000 teen pregnancies were reported in the state.

Sexually transmitted diseases are common in teens and young adults. Chlamydia and gonorrhea occur most frequently among people between 15 and 24. Nearly 47 percent of all high school students in the United States reported in 2003 that they had sex at least once, statistics from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show.

The Healthy Teens Act passed overwhelmingly in the Democratic-led Assembly last year but died in the Senate. Spano, R-Yonkers, said he intends to make passage of the bill in the GOP-controlled Senate a priority this session.

The legislation would set up a grant program to pay for sex education. It would have to be funded later.

The Healthy Teens Act would enable school districts, school-based health centers, Boards of Cooperative Educational Services and community organizations to apply for grants to develop and implement programs that provide sex education. Schools would be able to develop curricula that best suit their students' needs and do the following

Encourage family communication.
Promote self-esteem and teach the skills needed to make responsible decisions about sex.
Stress the value of abstinence while not ignoring adolescents who have had sex.
Provide medically accurate information about sexually transmitted infections and pregnancy prevention, including information about contraceptives.

At Suffern High School, all those topics are already touched on as part of 11th-grade health education, Superintendent Rob McNaughton said.

There, as in many local districts, school officials seek input from parents in designing the curriculum. As a result, McNaughton said, there is "a major emphasis on abstinence."

In the Mahopac school district, decisions about heath education are made in concert with the 20-member Health Education Advisory Council, which includes teachers, parents, students, school board members, other residents and representatives from community agencies.

"We get the critical information needed from all the different interested parties," said Candace La Vigne, assistant superintendent for student services. "We try to get a wide diversity of opinion."

For a father in Yorktown Heights, sex education has no place in the schools and should not be publicly funded. Bruno Decaudin, a computer consultant whose daughter attends the Catholic John F. Kennedy High School in Somers, says it's the parents' job to educate their children — a responsibility he believes many parents have abdicated. He said he withdrew his daughter from public school "to protect her."

"Kids don't even go out with each other; they just hook up for an afternoon or for the night. They have sex as if they were going to have an ice cream together," he said. "You go to the mall … and see 12-, 13-year-old girls dressed like two-cent hookers who walk around the whole evening without adult supervision, and the parents are going to be the first ones wondering, 'How come my daughter got pregnant? How come my daughter has gonorrhea or some other STD?'

"As long as the attitudes are not changed, you can dump as many billions as you want — it's not going to make any difference.

"Besides, it is not up to the school to educate the kids about sex — it's up to the parents. I send my kids to school to get an education — not a sex education."

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