School Birth Control Talks Urged : Simi Valley: Under panel’s plan, teachers would discuss some methods with seventh-graders.

A committee of Simi Valley parents and educators has recommended adding information about some birth control methods to the seventh-grade sex education class and widening the discussion of the issue for high school sophomores.

The plan directs teachers to sandwich discussions about birth control between expanded lessons on overcoming peer pressure and practicing abstinence as the only foolproof way to protect against pregnancy and disease.

The board of the Simi Valley Unified School District formed the committee out of concern that no birth control information was included in the district’s sex education curriculum. But a closer review found that students for years have haphazardly learned some of the information in 10th-grade health class, officials said.

“Teachers have been doing that kind of thing anyway,” said Leslie Crunelle, the district’s director of curriculum, who led the committee’s discussions. “It’s just that nobody said we expect you to do eight to 10 lessons on this.”

If approved by the school board, the committee’s plan would standardize what high school students learn, Crunelle said. For seventh-grade students, the plan would address typical questions that 12-year-olds ask about birth control, she said.

“The (seventh-grade) kids would learn about only those methods they already have heard about--condoms, the Pill and the rhythm method,” Crunelle said.

The use of abortion as a means of birth control would not be discussed at any level, Crunelle said. Nor has the committee recommended distributing condoms in school, she said.

Just the mention of introducing birth control information to the curriculum has spurred angry parent reaction since the committee started meeting in September. The committee was charged with recommending at what age--not whether--students should learn about birth control in school.

Gary Morrison, a parent among several dozen who have spoken out against the idea at recent school board meetings, said teaching about birth control to students of any age sends a double message about abstinence.

“The parents of Simi Valley are entitled to have the healthiest behavior possible taught to their children and anything else is a compromise,” Morrison said after reviewing the recommendations. “Abstinence works every time it’s tried.”

The proposal to expand birth control curriculum has been cited, in part, for efforts under way to recall board members Carla Kurachi, Debbie Sandland and Diane Collins, who supported the change.

Some committee members said the diverse group of 25 people worked well together despite divergent viewpoints on the issue. The panel was made up of teachers, administrators and parents chosen at random from a list of people who had expressed interest.

A formal draft of the proposal has been sent to committee members, who have been asked to sign off on it, said committee member Marge Chamberlain, who supports the recommendations.

“I would be very surprised if 98% of the committee doesn’t sign on to this,” Chamberlain said.

“Kids already ask these questions,” said Chamberlain, a juvenile probation supervisor and the mother of two elementary school-age boys. “What we wanted to do was put it in a factual context so they could trust it.”

Glenn Woodbury, who has said he volunteered for the committee because he wants a curriculum that teaches students better ways of saying no to sex, said he supports the plan because it dictates what teachers can and cannot do in the classroom.

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“Up to now, we’ve had . . . free-lance sex education in our schools,” Woodbury said. “It was left entirely up to the discretion of the health educators.”

School board member Sandland, who proposed forming the committee, said she was delighted with the recommendations. Sandland said she favors emphasizing abstinence but informing students about how to protect themselves if they become sexually active.

The school board will discuss the recommendations at its regular meeting next Tuesday, but a vote on the issue is not scheduled until Feb. 22, after two public meetings on the issue.

The first meeting is scheduled for Jan. 10 at 7 p.m. at Sequoia Junior High School and the second for Jan. 20 at 6:30 p.m. at Berylwood Elementary School.