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South Florida Sun Sentinel: Palm Beach County schools quietly drop sex education course
South Florida Sun Sentinel - Palm Beach County schools quietly drop sex education course
By Scott Travis | South Florida Sun Sentinel
UPDATED: March 9, 2025 at 7:01 AM EDT
A sex education course offered yearly to help students avoid pregnancy, disease and dating violence has been quietly scrapped by the Palm Beach County School District.
The school district is the latest in a string of Florida districts that have ended or drastically changed their sex ed curriculum amid increasing pressure from the state to focus on abstinence rather than contraception.
In years past, Palm Beach County schools have offered a “human growth and development” curriculum for students. Topics included human body parts, puberty, menstrual cycles and child safety in lower grades. Middle and high school programs focused on such topics as consent, pregnancy and disease prevention and online safety. The material was usually taught for about a week in the spring semester, and parents were allowed to opt their children out of the program.
But the district has been unable to get a specific sex ed program for this year approved by the state, officials said. As a result, students are only guaranteed to learn about the topic as part of the regular science curriculum in fifth and sixth grade, as well as in high school biology and a high school health class. Human anatomy and physiology, an elective class, also covers some material.
No sex ed is being offered for students in kindergarten through fourth grade or seventh and eighth grade.
/snip
By Scott Travis | South Florida Sun Sentinel
UPDATED: March 9, 2025 at 7:01 AM EDT
A sex education course offered yearly to help students avoid pregnancy, disease and dating violence has been quietly scrapped by the Palm Beach County School District.
The school district is the latest in a string of Florida districts that have ended or drastically changed their sex ed curriculum amid increasing pressure from the state to focus on abstinence rather than contraception.
In years past, Palm Beach County schools have offered a “human growth and development” curriculum for students. Topics included human body parts, puberty, menstrual cycles and child safety in lower grades. Middle and high school programs focused on such topics as consent, pregnancy and disease prevention and online safety. The material was usually taught for about a week in the spring semester, and parents were allowed to opt their children out of the program.
But the district has been unable to get a specific sex ed program for this year approved by the state, officials said. As a result, students are only guaranteed to learn about the topic as part of the regular science curriculum in fifth and sixth grade, as well as in high school biology and a high school health class. Human anatomy and physiology, an elective class, also covers some material.
No sex ed is being offered for students in kindergarten through fourth grade or seventh and eighth grade.
/snip
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