Florida tells schools to ‘emphasize abstinence’ in sex ed, skip lessons on contraception

Florida has told school districts around the state that they may not teach teenagers about contraception, show them pictures depicting human reproductive anatomy or discuss topics such as sexual consent and domestic violence, according to district officials and an advocate for comprehensive sexual health education.

As a result, Orange County Public Schools intends to scrap its own high school sex education plans and instead use a state-approved textbook that focuses on abstinence. The district’s now-abandoned curriculum, outlined in a nearly 600-page document it provided to the Orlando Sentinel, stresses abstinence for teenagers but also provides information on how pregnancy occurs, the pros and cons of various birth control methods, what consent means and ways to handle pressure to be sexually active.

Broward County Public Schools has until early October to tell the state how it aims to teach about reproductive health during the 2024-25 school year but knows the Florida Department of Education thinks some of the lessons it had planned to teach “are not age or developmentally appropriate.”

Broward schools now is preparing to comply with state requirements and “emphasize abstinence” in their lessons, the district said in an emailed statement Friday.

Karen Castor Dentel, a member of the Orange County School Board, said the state’s instructions mean students will glean information from their phones and their friends rather than reputable sources.

“I think it’s utterly ridiculous and is a continuation with the state’s obsession with sex and denying our students fact-based information about their bodies, how they work,” Castor Dentel said. “I think it’s a disservice to this generation, but it’s consistent with what is coming out of Tallahassee these days.”

The recent directives from the state came in phone calls from education department officials a year after school districts submitted their sex education lessons plans for approval, per a new state law. Last September, the education department told school districts they had to send in their reproductive health plans for review or use state-approved textbooks for those lessons.

Previously, local school boards oversaw the approval of their districts’ sex education materials.

But as the Sentinel reported in July, the state did not respond to the plans a number of districts submitted as an alternative to the state-approved curriculum. So for the 2023-24 school year OCPS and some other districts canceled the sex education lessons typically taught in the spring.

Now, with the 2024-25 school year underway, they’ve been told their plans do not meet state approval.

Castor Dentel, a former OCPS teacher, noted that sex education lessons – which in Orange started in fifth grade – are voluntary, and parents can opt their children out if they do not like the topics covered. In her six years on the school board, those lessons have never been an issue.

“No one has ever complained about their kid learning about reproductive health,” she added.

The state education department did not respond to a request for comment Friday nor to email requests sent over the summer when the Sentinel asked why districts reproductive health plans had not been approved.

Florida law requires schools to teach reproductive health lessons in grades 6 to 12 that emphasize the “benefits of sexual abstinence as the expected standard and the consequences of teenage pregnancy.”

But in the past, districts have been able to offer additional instruction. Orange schools, for example, started their lessons in fifth grade with a class on the physical changes of puberty and for high schoolers provided conversations about contraception and sexually transmitted diseases, among other topics.

Orange school leaders declined to discuss in detail their interaction with the state about the sex education curriculum. State officials called Broward educators on Aug. 21 to outline their concerns with its planned lessons, according to a memo Broward educators put together about the call.

“Pictures of external sexual/reproductive anatomy should not be included in any grade level,” the memo said, characterizing the concerns expressed orally by the state. “Contraceptives are not part of any health or science standard” but could be mentioned as “health resource,” though “pictures, activities, or demonstrations that illustrate their use should not be included in instruction in any grade level,” it said.

“Different types of sex (i.e., anal, oral, and vaginal) cannot be part of instruction in any grade level,” state officials added in the call, according to the Broward memo. The high school lessons Orange schools submitted last year also mentioned different types of sex.

Elissa Barr, a professor of public health at the University of North Florida, said she has heard from health education educators in about a dozen Florida school districts who have been told by state officials to remove topics such as contraception from their curriculum plans and teach “abstinence only.”

That is a strategy, she said, that decades of research shows is not effective.

“We in Florida, we’re moving in the wrong direction,” Barr said. “We should be making data-driven decisions, and we’re just not.”

Barr is part of the Florida Healthy Youth Alliance, a group that advocates for comprehensive sexual health education in schools. The group wants teenagers taught the benefits of abstinence – “We all want our kids to wait longer,” she said – but also how to protect themselves from sexually transmitted diseases and unplanned pregnancies should they become sexually active.

That sort of program, she said, is the most effective in convincing teens to delay sexual activity and avoid its problematic consequences.

As district officials contact her, Barr has been keeping a list of words and phrases they’ve been told to remove from their reproductive health plans. They include abuse, consent, domestic violence, fluids, gender identity and LGBTQ information, she said.

Axing the word “fluids” will make it hard to accurately teach how HIV is transmitted – a topic that is required by the state – since it is spread through blood, breast milk, semen and vaginal fluids, she said. “That’s science.”

All of the district officials Barr spoke with said they got phone calls, but no written communication, from the education department.

OCPS said it got “verbal feedback” from the department, with the state’s updated health education standards and new laws cited to explain why the district’s plans needed changes.

“The FDOE strongly recommended the district utilize the state-adopted text,” the district said in an emailed statement.

A state-authorized textbook used in Lake County high school classes last year preaches abstinence as the only effective way to prevent STDs and pregnancy and does not mention contraception. It also encourages students to go on group dates rather than spend one-on-one time with a partner.

“Our curriculum will emphasize abstinence and provide comprehensive health education to help students make informed, healthy decisions,” Broward schools said in its statement. “While advisory groups have expressed concerns about changes to the curriculum, we will adhere to state law and FLDOE rules.”

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(Scott Travis of the South Florida Sun Sentinel contributed to this story.)