Abstinence Only Education in the Bay Area

In 2004, California passed a law, SB 71, which made clear that public schools choosing to provide sexuality education to students must do so in accordance with the California Education Code.

Such codes reflect sound public health policy regarding adolescent sexual health however many schools continue to fall short of this ed code requirement by allowing fabricated, so-called-prevention-programs, widely known as "Abstinence Only" into the classroom.

In 2000 a mother in Oakland discovered that her son had received one of these so-called prevention programs. It was created by a Crisis Pregnancy Center, First Resort. This so-called-prevention-program was called "CryBabies". The mother successfully fought to have the program removed from the Oakland Unified School District but meanwhile First Resort had stealthily migrated to the Mt. Diablo Unified School District. Just two years later, in 2002, another mother, after becoming alarmed at what her son had been taught, launched an all out effort to have the program removed from her school district.

Thus, Bay Area Communities for Health Education, BACHE, was formed.

Since that time a never ending list of these stealth, so-called-prevention programs, have been popping up all over. For example, in the San Ramon Valley Unified School District, parents voiced concerns about a program called "Teen Esteem". Once alerted to the fact that the Teen Esteem program did not meet the requirements of the California Ed Code and, that TE was providing students with anti-contraception messages and medical misinformation, SRVUSD removed it.

More recently a program called "AWAIT &FIND" was put on the spot by CBS5 news, for providing their out-of-compliance program to students. As a result of the investigation the Fremont Unified School District has taken steps to remove AWAIT&FIND from their classrooms.

While California has consistently refused federal funding for abstinence-only education, programs like AWAIT&FIND are receiving millions directly from the feds through various funding streams, including the Community Based Abstinence Education, CBAE This funding bypasses the state thus allowing it to be delivered directly to organizations, many of them faith based such as Crisis Pregnancy Centers, whose aim is not education but rather the undermining of access to contraception and other reproductive health care education and services.

Much work is being done to oust these programs from our schools, but as was the case with the programs mentioned above, often times, the programs exist in the classroom under the radar, touting their programs as; "character education"; "risk prevention education"; "refusal skills education" etc. etc. The list of faux titles is never ending. Once they are discovered these so-called-prevention programs quickly change their content to cover their tracks. For example: Teen Esteem who in the beginning was quietly directing students to the Valley Crisis Pregnancy "hotline", and linking students to sites which showed graphic images of aborted fetuses now tells schools and parents that their program teaches internet safety.

The effort of abstinence only programs to infiltrate our public school classrooms and miseducate students continues. Therefore, parents need to be pro-active in their support of comprehensive sexuality education in our public schools.

Tips on what you can do can be found in the "helpful links" section to the right.