Improvement Needed in AIDS Education, Grand Jury Reports

Junior high and high schools are teaching students the basic facts about AIDS but are failing to instruct them uniformly how to resist peer pressure and abstain from sex and other high-risk activities that could lead to infection, according to an Orange County Grand Jury report released Monday.

“While most schools teach the fundamentals of the viral infection, few schools provide instructions on how to develop refusal skills to avoid high-risk activities,” the report states. “Discussions of sexual abstinence and abstinence from drug use, the most effective means of AIDS prevention, are, in many cases, not adequately presented to the students.”

Henry Legere, chairman of the grand jury’s Children’s Services Committee, said he could not comment beyond the findings of the report.

The grand jury sent survey forms about AIDS education to 205 schools. The survey was conducted to determine how schools are complying with a state law that mandates AIDS education.

Most of the school districts comply with the law, the grand jury found.

“However, it is apparent that the extent to which the topics are covered differ widely, since the hours spent on such instruction . . . ranged from one hour to 100 hours,” the report states.

University High School in Irvine was singled out by the grand jury, which commended its “outstanding” program and student-sponsored extracurricular activities but did not elaborate.

The survey found that 79 schools provide HIV/AIDS information in health education classes, while 118 schools teach the information in social studies, physical education, science or biology classes. Only 12 schools took advantage of state funding for the classes.

The grand jury recommended that superintendents provide teachers with ongoing training in AIDS education. It also recommended that the county Department of Education aggressively publicize its workshops for school board members, administrators and parents to bolster attendance.