SAN FRANCISCO – San Francisco middle-schoolers could soon have access to condoms at school as part of a proposal currently under consideration by district board members.
San Francisco Unified School District Superintendent Richard Carranza suggested at a Jan. 12 board meeting that the district’s middle schools distribute condoms to students as young as 11 years old, whether or not their parents want them to have access, the San Francisco Examiner reports.
The proposal, to be discussed at a Feb. 1 augmented curriculum and program committee meeting, would also eliminate the options for parents to opt their children out of the program, which was first implemented in district high schools in 1991. District officials included the ability of high school student parents to opt their child out of the program in 1996, according to the news site.
“Condoms are provided to the schools from the San Francisco Department of Public Health, and are packaged with educational and instructional materials,” the Examiner reports. “Middle school students would need to meet with a school social worker or district nurse before receiving condoms.”
The goal, Carranza said, is the curb sexually transmitted diseases and prevent teen pregnancies.
“I think that to the extent that our Healthy Kids Survey finds that kids are actually engaging in sexual behavior in middle school, then we want to make sure that they’re as safe as they can be, and as well-educated as they ban be about the implications of that,” Rachel Norton, commissioner on the program committee, told the news site.
San Francisco schools, of course, aren’t the first to dole out condoms to preteens.
read more at http://eagnews.org/san-fran-schools-mull-mandatory-distribution-of-condoms-to-11-year-olds/
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