District to Expand AIDS Program

Students will receive more AIDS-prevention instruction than previously proposed under an education program adopted last week by the Capistrano Unified School District.

After weeks of reviewing the curriculum proposal, district trustees voted to expand the AIDS-prevention program from three to four class periods of instruction for the year. In previous public hearings involving the program, teachers, parents and students said they wanted to make sure students were given enough information about the deadly disease.

The board also approved forming an HIV/AIDS Education Task Force to help create an instruction program for students in elementary school and review other AIDS-related programs.

A new state law requires school districts to teach AIDS prevention to students in middle school and high school starting this school year. Educators are required to provide the education to students once during their middle school years and again during high school.

For this year only, Capistrano students in eighth, 10th, 11th and 12th grades will participate in the program, officials said. In the coming years, the AIDS-prevention information will be taught in seventh-grade science classes and in ninth-grade science or biology classes.

Under the new program, social aspects of the disease will be discussed in coeducational settings, while topics such as how the virus is transmitted and how infection can be avoided will be discussed separately among boys and girls.

Trustees turned down a recommendation to make all aspects of the program coeducational for students in 10th through 12th grades, saying they wanted to make sure students feel comfortable enough to ask any questions.

As outlined by the state law, the Capistrano program requires instructors to stress abstinence from sexual activity and intravenous drug use as the “most effective means for AIDS prevention.”