MOORPARK : Panel to Review Sex Education Program

Cheered by 10 members of a local church, the board of the Moorpark Unified School District decided this week to form a community task force to review how the district teaches sex education.

Led by board member Tom Baldwin, who is up for reelection in two weeks, the board on Tuesday ordered Supt. Thomas Duffy to appoint a task force of community residents to review the district’s sex education program.

“Enough is enough,” said board member Pam Castro, adding that the district should take the same no-tolerance approach to sexual activity among teen-agers as it does to drug use. “I think the biggest mistake that we’ve made in education . . . is that we were trying to teach in a moral vacuum,” Baldwin said.

The district now teaches students about sexuality, reproduction and sexually transmitted diseases, Duffy told the board. “It (sex education) is a very serious issue,” the Rev. Errol Hale of Shiloh Community Church, who was accompanied by some members of his congregation. “With the advent of AIDS and abortion, it is quite literally an issue of life and death.”

But Duffy warned the board against advocating one set of values over another in a public school curriculum. He said the district already had planned to review and amend the sex education program in line with recommendations by state school Supt. Bill Honig, to emphasize abstinence as the best prevention against disease and unwanted pregnancy.

Two weeks ago, a motion to form the task force died in a tie vote. At that meeting, members Sam Nainoa and Patty Waters voted against the task force in favor of having the district’s staff recommend changes in the sex education program, as is done with other curriculum changes. Castro, who was absent from the previous meeting, broke the tie Tuesday. Board President Cynthia Hubbard joined Castro and Baldwin in calling for the task force.