OXNARD : Schools Retain AIDS Curriculum

Trustees for the Oxnard Elementary School District have voted to retain the district’s current AIDS curriculum, despite pleas from Los Angeles AIDS activists that they expand the program.

At the same time, the trustees on Wednesday adopted a policy proposed by an advisory committee that will allow teachers below the seventh grade to respond to students’ questions on the use of condoms.

Marian White, a district learning director who co-chaired the HIV/AIDS task force, said parents were adamantly opposed to the district teaching about condoms below the seventh grade.

“The belief of the community is that teaching (about condoms) in the fifth and sixth grade is the purview of the family,” White told the board.

Jack Fowler, the trustee who in November proposed that the district lower the grade level that students are taught about condoms, replied that not all parents are responsible enough to provide proper instruction.

Information about AIDS is now introduced to students as early as kindergarten in the district, but information on condoms is not presented until the seventh grade.

Fowler had also proposed that the district consider distributing condoms to sexually active students if the high school district did not take such action, but that suggestion was not addressed by the task force or the board on Wednesday.

Members from the Los Angeles chapter of AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, or ACT UP, an activist group that demonstrated for condom distribution in Los Angeles schools, attended the board meeting and warned trustees about the spread of AIDS among youths.

“One thing you can’t ignore is that children are sexually active,” said Robert Dhondrup of Redondo Beach. “Some are getting pregnant and some are getting AIDS.”