School Board signals it is willing to buck parents on expanding sex ed

By Ian Whitaker

Friday, Nov. 6, 2015 | 2 a.m.

Despite loud opposition from a group of parents, the Clark County School Board voted Thursday night to consider expanding middle and high school sex education to include topics like sexual orientation and gender identity.

It was the culmination of a second rowdy public meeting on the district’s sex ed curriculum at Las Vegas Academy. The first, held in late September, saw a spirited defense of the state’s current opt-in law by a group of parents, many of whom live in the county’s rural communities.

But last night marked a win for the other side, a group of current and former CCSD students flanked by Planned Parenthood and the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada, who have called for the district’s sex ed curriculum to be updated.

School Board trustees voted unanimously to have Superintendent Pat Skorkowsky and CCSD administrators review ways to include topics like sexual orientation, gender identity and gender stereotypes in current sex ed curriculum for middle and high schoolers.

“I understand there are sensitivities for different groups of my constituents, but no student should feel as though they are not valid,” said Trustee Chris Garvey.

Parents who took a district survey on the issue earlier this year indicated that they opposed the inclusion of those topics, though a majority of respondents, which included CCSD staff and community members, were in favor.

The district currently does not include information about homosexuality, and some feel it should adopt a "comprehensive" model of sex education found in other states.

The contingent of parents who showed up Thursday night claimed topics like homosexuality would “confuse” students. Others said it was their right to control what their kids were exposed to. One man, Thatcher Cardon of Logandale, 50 miles northeast of Las Vegas, claimed homosexuality wasn’t even real.

“We’ve known many people who have felt that way before but got over it,” he said, to jeers from students in the audience.

Others, including Nevada ACLU legal director Amy Rose, defended the inclusion.

"My interest here is protecting students. [LGBTQ] is a protected category of people in Nevada,” she said. “This is not something that the ACLU came and made up, this is the law in Nevada. These are facts.”

But just as they expanded sex ed in secondary grades, trustees balked at expanding it in elementary school.

At issue was a proposal to insert into the district's fifth-grade sex ed courses information about how to make responsible sexual choices, where to find contraception and other topics.

"It's not safe for us to be introducing these things at grade five," said Trustee Erin Cranor. "We're not keeping them safe if we accidentally institutionalize [the idea] of them being sexually active at a young age."

"This is way over the top," said Trustee Linda Young. "It's too young, it really is."

Even Trustee Carolyn Edwards, the trustee who has been the most adamant in reforming CCSD's sex education, was in favor of tweaking the proposal.

The trustees ended up not making a definitive decision about elementary sex ed curriculum due to time constraints, opting instead to let Skorkowsky and his team look more closely at the proposal.

The trustees also instructed Skorkowsky to consult with the Legislative Counsel Bureau about whether the school district’s sex ed advisory committee, or SEAC, could be expanded to include a parent from each school board district as many in the audience demanded.

“Parents need to be represented on the SEAC board,” said Deborah Earl of Power2Parent, the parent advocacy group that is organizing much of the opposition to sex ed reform. “That's what it was designed for."

The parents also opposed letting students on the SEAC have voting power, claiming they were vulnerable to “undue influence.”

As it stands, nothing the school board decided on Thursday night is set in stone.

Everything, including the proposal to include information about sexual orientation in middle and high school, will have to come back to the board again at a later date.