Comprehensive Sex Education
Issue: Building a Healthy & Inclusive Society
Target Level of Office: School Board
Policy Name: Policy 5315 – Family Life and Human Sexuality
Policy Origin: Broward County School Board, Florida
Link: www.YEONetwork.org/2013policy/?i=236
Summary Narrative of the Policy: A school board ordinance to ensure that Broward County public
schools offer students comprehensive sexual health education that follows the National Sexuality
Education Standards and promotes healthy attitudes concerning growth and development,
body image, gender and sexuality, dating, relationships, and family.
Relevant Talking Points & Important Information:
• The goal of the National Sexuality Education Standards: Core Content and Skills, K-12
is to provide clear, consistent, and straightforward guidance on the essential minimum,
core content for sexuality education that is developmentally and age-appropriate for
students in grades K-12. Specifically, these standards were developed to address the
inconsistent implementation of sexuality education nationwide and the limited time
allocated to teaching the topic.
• Health education, which typically covers a broad range of topics including sexuality
education, is given very little time in the school curriculum. According to the School
Health Policies and Practices Study, conducted by the CDC’s Division of Adolescent
School Health, a median of 17.2 hours is devoted to instruction in HIV, pregnancy, and
STD prevention: 3.1 hours in elementary, 6 hours in middle, and 8.1 hours in high school.
• For a healthy community, it is important that children are given affirmative, age-appropriate,
and accurate information. This Family Life and Sexual Health Education policy ensures
that schools are designing and delivering sexuality education K-12 that is planned,
sequential, and part of a comprehensive school health education approach; provides
a clear rationale for teaching sexuality education content and skills at different grade
levels that is evidence-informed, age-appropriate, and theory-driven; improves academic
performance by addressing a content area that is both highly relevant to students and
directly related to high school graduation rates; and presents sexual development as a
normal, natural, healthy part of human development that should be a part of every health
education curriculum.
• According to our partners at Advocates for Youth, research has been found that students
who receive comprehensive sex education were 50 percent less likely to experience teen
pregnancy than those who received abstinence-only education. Comprehensive sex
education improves health outcomes for students, including lowering the incidence of
unprotected sex, STI transmission, and pregnancy rates.
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2014 Book