Medford, Ore., — The Medford School Board is adopting a new policy for sex education.
In the slimmed down policy, parents are not directly included in the language for contributing to lesson plans.
In Monday night’s approved sex ed policy, those included in developing lesson plans was streamlined to “educators , community members and local experts.”
24 bullet points in the old policy were dropped, including promoting monogamous relationships and abstinence.
Update 5/27
Medford School D Communications Specialist Natalie Hurd writes: “The bullet points that were removed were in fact the state content standards for health. The policy committee does not include a list of state standards in any policies for any curricular area, so this revision made it so that our policies are written in a standardized form. It is mandatory that we continue to teach to state standards. That includes the standard: “Explain why abstinence is the safest, most effective method of protection from HPV, STD/HIV, Hepatitis B and C and pregnancy.””
The school district says they are making changes to the sex ed policy to allow flexibility for possible future changes in curriculum. Public meetings will be held in the future before curriculum changes are made.
Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that sex ed classes were extended. That is not the case. We regret the error.
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