AIDS Curriculum for County Schools Unveiled

Top San Diego County educators and health officials Tuesday unveiled an AIDS prevention and education curriculum expected to be implemented this fall in middle and high school classrooms throughout the county.

The program, outlined at an afternoon press conference at the San Diego County Office of Education, would be geared toward students in 6th through 12th grades.

“Our youth are infallible and invincible, at least in their own way of thinking,” said Carol St. Cook of the County Health Services Department. “It’s a tough age group to address.”

The curriculum, whose explicitness increases with each grade level, features videotapes, classroom work sheets and tests for each grade, and is designed to heighten students’ awareness of the lethal acquired immune deficiency syndrome and how it is spread.

However, school district administrators stressed that the program would educate students, not provide them with condoms or clean needles. In San Diego, such AIDS-protective measures are provided only by private educational groups such as the San Diego AIDS Project.

“Abstinence will be reinforced,” said Edward Fletcher of the San Diego Unified School District. “Starting with the eighth grade, we will start talking about condoms. Each grade level does talk about sexual intercourse and IV (intravenous) needles.”

The educators said they based much of the curriculum on a California Senate bill that, if passed, will require all school districts in the state to teach AIDS prevention to students in the 7th through 12th grades.

“We expect this bill to be passed sometime near the end of August,” said County Supt. of Schools Thomas Boysen. “Now, we are working with the school districts to help them respond correctly to the bill. . . . We didn’t want them running around unprepared when this bill passes.”

“When we wrote the curriculum,” said Pamela Luna-Raffy, the health education coordinator for the County Office of Education, “we looked at the (U.S.) Surgeon General’s report, other programs from around the country, as well as the bill. We wanted to make sure we were aligned with the bill.”

She said about 25% of the 43 school districts in San Diego County have shown some interest in the program, which educators spent about two months designing. But only the San Diego Unified district, which already has an AIDS prevention program in place, has made a commitment.

“I examined documents from all over the country,” said Fletcher, whose district is the largest in the county. “I haven’t seen anything that can compare with this. We will definitely use most of this. I can see us taking some of these excellent materials entirely and using them.”

Luna-Raffy added: “It’s left up to the school districts if they want to embellish on any of these programs.”

About 20% of the school districts across the county already operate an AIDS education program, she said, including Chula Vista and Grossmont.

She said she began work on the curriculum after noting that 20 other states and the District of Columbia have required their school districts to teach AIDS education courses.

932 AIDS Cases

In addition, she said, national health indicators show that 57% of all 17-year-olds report having sex and that close to 2.5 million teen-agers are afflicted with some type of sexually transmitted disease each year.

There have been 932 cases of AIDS reported in San Diego County since the disease was recognized seven years ago, according to the most recent County Health Services figures. Fifty-four cases of AIDS were reported last month, a one-month record.

“However, there have only been four cases involving school-age children (in the county),” said St. Cook. “Two of those children are still living, but we don’t know if they are in school. That isn’t reported.”

Two of the four children caught the AIDS virus through blood transfusions. One was a hemophiliac who got the disease by using an infected blood component needed to control bleeding. The other was born to a parent infected with the virus.

St. Cook noted that the incubation period for AIDS can range from a few months to five years to a decade.

“Many of the reported cases were in people between the ages of 20 and 29,” she said. “Theoretically, many of them could have been infected while they were in high school.”

St. Cook and the others said that, because scientists have not developed a cure for the AIDS virus, the only method of stemming the spread of the deadly disease is spreading the truth about AIDS.

“Spin-offs from a program such as this are that the kids will educate the parents,” said Dr. Howard Robin, chief of medicine at Sharp Cabrillo Hospital. “The education community needs to bring the message to kids about drugs and IV drug users. AIDS is and will continue to be one of the most significant health problems facing the United States.”

Luna-Raffy said that, while state Senate Bill 2840 only requires that seventh grade be the lowest grade level where AIDS prevention is taught, she and her colleagues also targeted sixth-graders.

“That’s because many of our middle schools have sixth grades,” she said. “The 6th- through 12th-graders make up a little more than half of all the students in the county.”

She said the architects of the program are not expecting opposition to the curriculum by parents, because many parents sat on the committee that reviewed it.

“Also, parents have the option to request that their child not be involved in this curriculum,” she said. “But I don’t think there will be any opposition or controversy. I think we were somewhat conservative with our approach.”

SAN DIEGO COUNTY AIDS CASES

‘81: 2

‘82: 4

‘83: 22

‘84: 44

‘85: 112

‘86: 225

‘87: 331

‘88: 200 (Through 6/30/’88)

Source: San Diego County Department of Health Services