NEISD suspends sex ed classes, fearing teachers might blurt out changes before they’re approved
SAFA’s work in the NEISD since 2015 is bearing good fruit!
Children will be protected from enduring these and parents will have some online access to see the bad, radical, graphic, and age-inappropriate “Planned Parenthood” California’s SexEd program called “Draw The Line/Respect The Line” for middle schoolers and “Healthy Futures Texas’” Big Decisions” bad curriculum for high school. Parents should be able to see how bad these programs actually are.
Unfortunately, Trustee David Beyer thinks students should have access to learning about promiscuity, vice not virtue, and how to utilize chemical & mechanical abortifacients to eliminate any natural consequence of young people engaging in sexual activity that is not healthy for them.
We must protect Texas children from the abortion industry trying to get kids hooked on sex before and outside of marriage that makes their businesses very profitable.
#SAFAprotectsChildren #SAFAdefendsParents
#ProtectTexasChildren
——-
NEISD suspends sex ed classes, fearing teachers might blurt out changes before they’re approved
Sep. 13, 2022
Updated: Sep. 14, 2022 11:32 a.m.
As the NEISD board agreed to suspend its sex education courses, trustee David Beyer pressed for assurances that students and parents will be able to locate the class materials online.Kin Man Hui, San Antonio Express-News / Staff photographer
SAN ANTONIO — The North East Independent School District won’t teach its sex education program this year so teachers and administrators can write a new curriculum, cancelling a class taken by thousands of students in 10 high schools and 14 middle schools.
The NEISD board voted unanimously late Monday to suspend the program on the recommendation of Superintendent Sean Maika.
The curriculum is being revised to bring it line with the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, or TEKS, requirements for health education put in place for the 2022-2023 school-year. Administrators said they were concerned some teachers might accidentally break state law by teaching content before it is reviewed by a citizens advisory panel and approved by the board.
A DISTRICT DIVIDED: North East ISD rejects grievance against sex ed curriculum – made by a fellow trustee
District officials hope to have a new human sexuality and abstinence education, or HSAE, curriculum approved by May 2023, in time for the following school year, but because of the complicated process, they do not have a concrete deadline.
“We did not come to the decision lightly, to ask for this to go on pause. It does weigh on us,” Jennifer Aguilar, the district’s director of physical education, health and athletics, said in an interview Tuesday.
“That is going to be a motivation for us to do this as fast as we can without rushing the process to make sure that what we move forward with is what our students need. And that it covers what we are told by the state of Texas it needs to cover,” she said.
Aguilar came to the board with a plea to give teachers time to do that, backed by Maika. Some “well-meaning” teachers might inadvertently include still-unapproved curriculum materials in class, “and now we’re in trouble because we’re breaking the law,” Aguilar said.
“We have a concern that there could be some confusion and they go back into their classrooms, and they bring in something from the new TEKS that they talked about here with us as we’re writing curriculum that hasn’t been approved. And now we’re in trouble because we’re breaking the law.”
In the absence of HSAE classes, the district will provide the current curriculum materials online for students to find with the help of their parents, and instruction guides for parents to help teach their children the materials, Aguilar told the board.
The district will schedule a “parent night” to help bring attention to the online offerings, she said.
“I would hate for a student who went looking for these materials to be unable to find them,” said board member David Beyer, appearing exasperated during the discussion that followed.
Beyer added a motion that the materials be easy to find online, and trustees agreed.
‘PARENTS’ RIGHTS’: A rallying cry in NEISD board races overlaps with national culture war
At NEISD, the HSAE courses have been made available to 19,500 students in the district’s high schools and more than 4,300 sixth graders, all of whom must opt-in to take it.
High school students will miss out on in-class instruction of a seven-day course called “Big Decisions.”
In sixth grade, the curriculum has been a five-day instruction in reproductive and sexual health called “Draw the Line, Respect the Line.” This program taught students refusal skills and how they can be applied in romantic relationships. Though comprehensive, it no longer completely aligns with the new TEKS, Aguilar said.
The appropriateness of the “Draw the Line” curriculum has been an issue in several NEISD board elections since it was adopted in 2016, but arguments about it grew more heated this year, when NEISD became the most prominent San Antonio battleground for culture war issues that have reverberated nationwide.
The board voted on March 21 to uphold the curriculum, rejecting a grievance that had been filed by trustee Steve Hilliard in 2019, before he was elected to the board in 2020. Hilliard said “Draw the Line” did not stress abstinence to the extent required by state law, though he got no backing from any other trustee, several of whom pointed out that the Texas Education Agency had endorsed it.
Months later, two incumbent trustees were defeated by Marsha Landry and Diane Sciba Villarreal, candidates backed by a group called ReImagineISD, which drew funding from a political action committee that had expressed opposition to the district’s sex ed program. That brought the number of trustees elected with the support of social-conservative political groups to a near-majority on the seven-member board.
On ExpressNews.com: ‘Vulgar and obscene’: NEISD pulls 110 books from libraries
Despite Aguilar’s hope that the changes can be done in a year, she couldn’t guarantee it, given the complicated approval process, so the suspension of HSAE is indefinite. Teachers have been working since May with a new textbook approved last year to create lesson plans that align with the new TEKS, Aguilar said.
“The new TEKS are focused more on understanding and application of the learning, and practicing the skills, as opposed to mostly just acquiring and learning about health education,” she said.
A newly created curriculum will go to the School Health Advisory Council, or SHAC, the state-mandated 50-person committee of parents and district officials, who make recommendations for changes or adaptations based on community values, Aguilar said. Starting this year, the SHAC also has to provide two public forums to air the recommendations.
Elizabeth Sander