Santa Ana Board Takes First Step for Sex Education

Despite some emotional protests from an overflow crowd, Santa Ana Unified School District trustees Tuesday night approved by a 4-1 vote a blueprint for bringing sex education into the 38,500-student district for the first time.

Previous school boards in Orange County’s largest school district have historically opposed sex education in the classrooms, even though health officials for years have stressed that Santa Ana Unified has the highest ratio of teen-age pregnancies in the county.

The school board Tuesday night voted to accept the recommendation of a special committee appointed in December to study the issue. That committee, composed of school district staff, health workers and community members, in June recommended that a curriculum be developed for sex education and family life.

Decision for Trustees

The school board’s vote Tuesday night authorized development of proposed teaching material and plans. Those suggested teaching plans, collectively called curricula, would be completed by January, 1989. The school board would then decide whether to accept the curricula and begin using it in classrooms from kindergarten through high school by the summer of 1989.

The materials also would include extensive information about AIDS--acquired immune deficiency syndrome--a fatal disease that is transmitted primarily through sexual activity or exchange of contaminated blood or bodily fluids.

The lone trustee voting against proceeding with the sex education development plans was Mary J. Pryer, a veteran board member and staunch conservative.

Pryer said the committee’s recommendations “were too vague.” She also said she worried that some forms of sex education, such as urging the use of condoms, may encourage sexual activity.

Pryer did not specifically oppose sex education itself, and only one of 10 people who spoke to the board before its vote seemed totally against sex education in the classroom. Pryer and the other opponents of the committee’s plan mainly objected to its wording and lack of what they termed specifics for emphasizing sexual abstinence.

‘Safe Sex Is No Sex’

“There is never a definition of abstinence” in the committee plan, said Rosemarie Avila of Santa Ana, one of several who spoke against the committee’s recommendations.

“The only safe sex is no sex,” a Santa Ana man in his early 20s told the school board.

Marilyn Wright of Santa Ana, who spoke in favor of sex education, told board members that she works at “crisis pregnancy clinic” as a volunteer.

“Younger teens are becoming sexually active. . . . Alarmingly, an increasing method of birth control is abortion,” Wright said, adding that many teen-age girls become pregnant through a lack of information. Abortions performed on such young girls, she said, often lead to emotional problems and even suicides.

After public testimony, the five trustees briefly explained their positions.

Board president Robert Richardson said: “This community has a very high teen-age pregnancy rate. We’ve got a problem right now. . . . Whatever curriculum is chosen, if a parent doesn’t want a child in the program, the child will not have to be in the program.”

Richardson and the other board members also stressed that they want comment from the community when the proposed sex education materials are unveiled in January. The materials would vary from grade to grade and according to age brackets, but the blueprint calls for teaching sex education from kindergarten through high school.

About 71% of Santa Ana Unified’s students are Latinos. The district has been growing by about 1,000 students per year for the past decade. The school district covers most of the city.

Sex education has historically been a source of controversy in Orange County. In the 1960s, a community furor over the beginning of sex education in Anaheim Union High School District brought national attention to Orange County. That controversy resulted in Anaheim Union High School District dropping sex education in 1969. The district still does not have any formal family life or sex education classes.

Santa Ana Unified has never had any formal sex education instruction, despite years of statistics from health agencies showing that the school district had the highest ratios of teen-age pregnancies in the county. According to the Coalition Concerned with Adolescent Pregnancy, a nonprofit Orange County organization partially funded by the state Department of Health Services, Santa Ana Unified has a much greater problem than any other school district in the county.

Cynthia Scheinberg, director of the coalition, praised Santa Ana Unified’s board for taking up the sex education issue this year, and she hailed the advisory committee’s report for recommending that sex education become a part of the district’s curriculum.

In December, when the school board and Supt. Edward Krass appointed the committee, it was directed to study sex education, determine what material is available for school use, and then recommend whether Santa Ana Unified should adopt any program.

The committee’s report first was presented to the school board June 14. At the time, it was given only a first reading and not fully discussed by the board.

The Orange County Department of Education has no current figures on how many of the county’s 28 school districts have sex education or family life instruction, according to Sandy Landry, coordinator of school health. But Landry said she believes that most districts now have some form of sex education.

TEEN BIRTHS In 1986, teen births were reported in every high school district in Orange County. 1986 teen births for Orange County school districts Highest

1. Santa Ana Unified: 286

2. Anaheim Union: 228

3. Fullerton Joint Union: 110

4. Garden Grove Unified: 107

Lowest 1. Laguna Beach Unified: 2

Source: Orange County Health Care Agency’s Understanding Pregnancy and Parenting-Better Efforts to Assist Teens Program.