Thursday, July 16, 2015 | 10 p.m.
The Clark County School Board voted Thursday to delay a review of its heavily criticized sexual education curriculum, much to the frustration of one board member.
School Board members were supposed to discuss the issue at Thursday night’s meeting, but other members moved successfully to put it off until September, arguing that many parents were on vacation and wouldn’t be around to offer input.
The move angered board member Carolyn Edwards, who first called for an examination of the sex-ed policy in 2013. She said the board was dragging its feet on behalf of a district that has been afraid to touch the issue.
“I am really seriously done with being asked to wait,” she said. “How many years do I have to wait to have a discussion on this item?”
“I am offended frankly, that you would ask me to wait again,” she said.
But board members were unmoved and voted 6 to 1 to delay it.
“To bring an item that has become as volatile as this goes against transparency,” said board member Patrice Tew, who represents northwest Las Vegas and some rural communities. “It will cause a rift and a lack of trust that I don’t know that we can recover from.”
“I represent a constituency base that wants to be involved,” board member Linda Young said.
Board members said they wanted to wait to get more public input, but Edwards pointed out that the district had already solicited parent input, including a districtwide poll. The results were presented at a board meeting in January and attracted scores of parents and students on both sides.
But the decision comes as no surprise. CCSD took a beating late last year when it was discovered that they had held private meetings about sex-ed curriculum without public input. Parents flooded subsequent meetings, decrying the district as being secretive. The backlash was so severe that it forced Superintendent Pat Skorkowsky to publicly apologize. Since then, the district has tread lightly around the issue.
In the meantime, the district’s sex-ed program has come under fire from advocates who say it does not give students accurate information about sex and sexually transmitted disease. The curriculum also does not offer any information on homosexuality or gender identity, which opponents say makes it discriminatory.
Recently, the Gay and Lesbian Community Center of Southern Nevada started offering free comprehensive sex education classes to CCSD students.
The delay also frustrates the Nevada ACLU, who, like Edwards, has been trying to get the district to review its policies since it began a statewide review of sex-ed curriculum in 2013.
“In some of the counties we’ve had really good success,” said Tod Story, president of the Nevada ACLU. “The one spot that has been the most difficult has been Clark County.”
In a review of the district’s sex-ed classroom materials, the Nevada ACLU found a number of factual inaccuracies, which included telling students that condoms aren’t effective in preventing STDs and that washing or urinating after sex could prevent pregnancy. They also found a number of materials were outdated or encouraged biased attitudes, like telling female students they would be unpopular in their school if they had sex.
An ACLU memo sent to school officials in May detailed the inaccuracies. But that went unanswered, according to Story.
“They’re doing everything they can to hold on to the status quo,” he said. “The foot dragging has gone on for way too long.”
He added that the ACLU would look into legal action if CCSD continued to delay the issue.
Join the Discussion:
Check this out for a full explanation of our conversion to the LiveFyre commenting system and instructions on how to sign up for an account.
Full comments policy