School board considers sex education program
The Olney Independent School District board approved a plan to offer a health and sexuality course to sixth through eighth graders, possibly starting as soon as next school year. The LifeGuard Character and Sexuality Education course was reviewed by the School Health Advisory Council, a group of local parents and educators, and will put OISD back in compliance with Texas Education Agency requirements, OISD Superintendent Dr. Greg Roach said. “It’s needed,” Dr. Roach said. “The kids are getting exposed to [sexual content] and it rewires their brains and we want to make sure it’s age appropriate.”
Parents will have a choice about whether to allow their children to attend the course, said Madison Ickert, director of Social Services and Mental Health for OISD and a member of the School Health Advisory Council. The Council reviewed several TEA-recommended programs and settled on LifeGuard because it seemed the best fit for the community, she said. Parents can review the curricula at the Austin-based company’s website: https://www.lifeguard-tx.org “This one seems that it would be the best fit for our school,” Mrs. Ickert said. “It’s very conservative in its approach. It stresses abstinence and talks a lot about health and safety. I gave the information to the other [Council members] and we discussed it and we presented it to the board.”
The Council particularly approved of the company’s mission statement, that it is “apolitical and provides … teens with medically accurate information and factual data about the risks, potential consequences and options regarding sexual activity,” it reads. “Our curriculum incorporates facts with practical tools to help teens build health relationships and make informed decisions through high school and fully experience the benefits of saving sex for marriage.”
Mrs. Ickert is working with the company to bring its educators to Olney from Austin, and to present the five-hour program over three days or in a single unit, she said. The lessons include learning about informed consent, the consequences of sexual behavior, sexually transmitted diseases, pregnancy, boundaries and relationship-building skills.
“These are all things students will face that I think need to be addressed and for them to be prepared for when that comes up,” she said. “I think it is important for kids to have the information about these kinds of things.”
OISD previously relied on an educator sent from Region 9 to teach kids about sex ed, but he retired a few years ago, Mrs. Ickert said. The school nurse then took over, and “would give a talk about bodies and information like that, but we are wanting to give more information to our students.”
Current OJH students have not been taught any information about sexuality other than science classes, she said. She stressed that “as always, it is optional for parents – we just want to be able to provide that.”
Public school sex ed classes have been a hot-button topic this year, after Florida Gov. Rick DeSantis led a legislative effort to ban classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in elementary school, and to limit discussion of those topics to “age appropriate” instruction in all grades. Gov. DeSantis recently moved to forbid sexual orientation instruction in all grades, according to a report by the Associated Press.
Mrs. Ickert said the Council did discuss the controversy around those politics but “we didn’t want to go too in-depth. It’s something that’s not a comfortable topic for everyone.”