Oswego high schoolers to get birth control lessons

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Updated: November 27, 2011 9:50PM

Starting with the current school year, freshmen at Oswego and Oswego East high schools will get lessons about condoms and other forms of birth control.

In a 5-2 vote Monday night, the Oswego School Board voted to adopt an Abstinence Plus curriculum for the district’s freshman health class. The curriculum includes an additional chapter and one or two days of classroom lecture on safe sex, including instruction in contraceptive options.

Lessons would not include demonstrations of any kind.

The emphasis of the course, however, would remain on abstinence.

“They’re wanting to ask questions. They’re asking questions (health teachers) can’t answer. What I look at is the need for information,” said School Board President Bill Walsh. “I think it’s a matter of getting information to students so they can ask more questions, talk to their parents and make their own decisions. Without that information they’re going to make decisions on false information from their friends or something they pick up on TV. At least the district is giving them the correct information.”

Oswego is the last public school district in the Fox Valley area to adopt a comprehensive sex education curriculum.

Open to discussion

Health teachers who brought the proposal to change the curriculum before the board said it would allow them to correct misinformation many of their students have about safe sex practices. Under the previous abstinence-only curriculum, teachers were not allowed to discuss birth control options with students, or answer many of the questions students had.

“Currently there are some students that inaccurately believe these birth control methods are 100 percent effective, and that is inaccurate,” said Carla Johnson, executive director of teaching and learning. “(With this curriculum) we can tell them, no, it’s not 100 percent. Then we say to them the only way you’re going to be 100 percent safe is to be abstinent. We can only give them the truth if we’re able to talk about it.”

According to the Illinois School Code, contraceptive information must be balanced — students who are taught about condoms and birth control pills must also be taught about potential side effects, failure rates and other possible consequences — and abstinence must be presented as the only risk-free option.

“I was concerned,” said Board Member Dave Behrens. “But I was hearing them talk. It’s still very much an abstinence program and it’s one chapter of the book. We’ve got to teach our kids all about it. If abstinence is going to be the core, then I’m all for it.”

Boiling down abstinence?

Board Members Brent Lightfoot and Mike Scaramuzzi cast the two votes against the comprehensive sex ed program.

“I fear that presenting the options for contraceptives is only going to boil down the message of abstinence,” said Scaramuzzi. “When we talk about drugs and alcohol, we don’t talk about, ‘hey, try it for yourselves,’ we tell them don’t do it. All we’re doing here is teaching our students how to perform the act and not get caught or face the consequences.”

Scaramuzzi also balked at the idea of singling out students who, for religious or other reasons, would be removed from health class during the sessions on contraceptives. According to the Illinois School Code, parents must be informed about the content of health courses and given the option to remove their children from the lessons to which they object.

“You’re ostracizing those kids when you ask them to opt out. You can shake you head, but that’s the reality,” Scaramuzzi said.

Parental consent

Already, students must take home a parental consent form at the beginning of the semester informing parents of the nature of health instruction, and parents may choose to opt their students out of some lessons. Students who are removed from lessons on contraceptives will be provided with the lesson information to take home and discuss with parents, but no students will be tested on the contraceptive material.

While health teachers said parents have rarely taken the opt-out for their classes, district administrators said parents routinely remove their students from classes for a variety of reasons.

“We have a very religiously diverse student body and we have kids opt out of things all the time,” said Superintendent Dan O’Donnell. “It’s not that big a deal anymore.”

The Abstinence Plus curriculum will be taught beginning with students who enroll in health class for the spring semester.