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Comprehensive Sex Education Could Be Coming to Florida Schools
03/02/09 - 10:20 AM

WMBB News Department

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Florida has one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the nation.

State lawmakers hope to change that by pushing a bill that would require a comprehensive sex education program in Florida’s public schools.

Sex education would be expanded in Florida’s middle and high schools under a proposal at the state capitol. Public schools in Florida receive $13 million from the federal government to support sex education programs.

Currently… public school sex ed. classes in the state focus on abstinence.

Under state law, schools that chose to teach sex education are required to teach that avoiding sex before marriage is the expected standard for students.  Individual districts can include information about contraception methods and sexually transmitted diseases, as long as they emphasize the benefits of abstinence.

Bay District schools teach sex education as part of their Life Management course, through a program with the Bay County Health Department called Freedom 180.

Course instructor at Mosley High School Julie Clark says they do include information on more than just abstinence.

“We are living in a disease-filled world,” Clark says, “So we need factual information in the hands of our young adults so they can make intelligent decisions.”

Representative Keith Fitzgerald is one of the legislators pushing for the bill. He says it’s time to make sex ed. more comprehensive and says that abstinence-only education is failing in Florida.

“Abstinence-only not fails to achieve objectives, there’s some evidence that it’s counterproductive by keeping people in the dark about the truth about how sex works,” Fitzgerald says. “Very often they’re more likely to engage in risky behavior, so this is an issue of responsibility and an issue of protection of our kids.”

“When you tell somebody about intercourse and sex and try to teach it to them, and force them not to do it, that’s the very thing they’re going to want to try,” says Bay County resident Sharon Price.

Fitzgerald says unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases are rising among teens in Florida, so he wants schools to give students all the facts and teach responsibility.

Currently at Bay District schools, the Life Management class that teaches sex education is required for classes of 2009 and 2010, but has been made optional for the class of 2011 and younger.

For a link to the proposed bill, click here.