001ready to go okay we're gonna call this hearing this is a public hearing this is uh about the sex education curriculum that we have to implement beginning of next year we won't be doing it this year but it'll be beginning of next year and this is a state mandated thing so we have to do this we've kind of gotten away in the past with not having it for the last couple of years but uh we have to the whole state's doing the same process we are so this this afternoon we have presenters those that would be here dr wright will recognize and this this will be a public information meeting so that people can find out what the curriculums that will be brought to the board for a vote and it'll be a question and
002answer period we'd like to uh we don't have any answers we have just as many questions too but we'd like to keep those brief we don't want to turn this into a debate so it's uh this is just a information period we will meet again in a month at the beginning of the next school board to have another public hearing and hopefully between then and now between now and then we should be able to come up with what everybody has agreed upon so um dr wright i'm gonna let you introduce those that will be speaking to us and and how they come to us absolutely uh first of all thank you for attending in just to make sure we're we're clear on two points if if the district is to offer sex education it has
003to go through a series of hearings and a committee form we form the committee in may this is the second uh this is the first of uh two hearings and the other option is the board to say we're not going to offer it at all they could do that if they wish it's at the board's discretion but if the district is going to offer a program that it must be fully vetted by stakeholders and then in the end the board will make the decision which of the two programs based on recommendations from stakeholders and administration they'll make a recommendation and then we'll move forward the administration will move forward as we are instructed by the board and so we have navajo county is here again representing and i do you have the list mary for
004our guests the names i have this thank you and uh crystal price from the youth are you are you here from the arizona youth partnership crystal there you are okay so we have had presentations from both of these ladies earlier highlighting their curriculum the curriculum has been on display was on display for 90 days and now this this is an opportunity to ask these they're experts in their curriculum it's to ask questions and also to express either support or concern to the board about either approach and so that's the purpose of of this evening you do not need to fill out a call to the public forum this is an open meeting if you would just state your name so for the minutes we do take minutes and then you know share what you have
005it's at the board president's pleasure how long that goes and so i think that's how we should proceed mr president is if there are any questions or comments with either the programs that the public has reviewed to this point i i think we'll clarify time we're supposed to start a regularly scheduled board meeting uh at five o'clock but if it looks like we're into this and there's quite a bit of comment we're going to extend that we'll just put that off i think i think we have about a 30-minute window that we can run over before we start the next meeting so let's uh move forward oh and also one other thing hopefully this won't turn into a debate and hopefully you can keep your brief comments brief not brief comments comments brief so that
006everybody can have an opportunity to share their uh opinions or questions thank you who's first do we have mike we do have microphones if you'll if any would like to come up there we go all right thank you so much thank you to everyone that's here and i'd like to thank the principals and the board for allowing um navajo county to come up and represent my name is elena brown and i am the teen health program manager for the health program for navajo county public health i did have a powerpoint presentation oh there it is all right so just a quick overview of our program the teen health program has had the privilege of partnering with the schools throughout navajo county since 2008. the overarching goal of our program is to educate the youth in
007our community about how the choices they make affect their whole health as well as reduce the rates of stis and unplanned pregnancy in our county we also aim to empower our youth and teach them the skills they need to make informed decisions about their health and to support that the curricula we offer are evidence-based medically accurate age-appropriate and incorporate positive youth development strategies these curricula that we offer they're offered as a free resource to the community which means we offer our programs including workbooks and activities and all the materials that go with that to schools and the community at no cost the curricula that we offer we have a middle school level and a high school level curriculum the middle school level curricula is positive potential it's a set of curriculum tailored to be age
008appropriate for each grade level 6th 7th and 8th grade respectively they each contain 5 lessons the 6th grade level also also offers a lesson on puberty and adolescent development as optional and the curriculum follows a positive youth development model here we have a general overview of each level so starting in sixth grade we introduced the program and its core concept of the five parts of the whole person so the physical health mental health emotional social and spiritual which is that youth set of personal values and how the choices that the youth make affect them on those different levels this core theme is carried throughout the entire positive potential program we also discuss topics such as bullying responding to peer pressure and decision making at this level on the seventh grade level we start talking about
009building up self-confidence as well as the topics of cyber bullying dangers of social media as well as stis and career planning oops let me go back one in eighth grade finally students get to deepen their understanding of planning and pacing relationships setting boundaries and they get to continue practicing refusal skills there's also a strong focus on goal setting at this level so that students are prepared and set up for success as they transition into high school i do want to note um what i didn't mention the previous slide both positive potential and love notes we did select them specifically for our conservative community still on positive potential at the end of each lesson there are parent team connections which means that youth and their parents or guardians are given the opportunity to have meaningful discussion
010on the topics that we discuss in the class moving on to our high school curricula we offer love notes love notes is 13 lessons evidence-based curriculum that also follows a positive youth development approach and the developers of this curriculum felt that it was important to take those concepts of traditional sti and pregnancy prevention education and integrate it with healthy relationship and workforce readiness the approach to this curriculum takes its starting point from the individual so the youth will understand their personality style their strengths their challenge areas and how does that translate to how they communicate with other personality styles once that youth has that foundation they can start building out what their expectations are what their goals their boundaries are as well as understanding the difference between healthy and supportive relationships unhealthy relationships as well
011as how to recognize and respond to dangerous relationships these concepts apply to all teens whether or not they're currently in a relationship as the ultimate goal is to have that team gain an understanding of what their personal goals are and what they want to achieve in the future and to start thinking about the relationships that they have and if they're in alignment with those goals if they're if not those youth learn strategies on how to handle conflict resolution and how to safely end a relationship like our middle school curricula love notes also has trusted adult connections at the end of every lesson and here is my contact information at the end for those that want to reach out thank you so much thank you i think we'll have both presentations right now and then we'll
012open it up for questions i think they're gonna we're gonna present first and now i have questions thank you sorry all right hello good evening thank you all for being here my name is anna isa costa i am the director of youth and family programs with arizona youth partnership and we are here to present on the choosing the best curriculum i do apologize that our powerpoint didn't make it on time but we do have some handouts for everybody to look at while we are presenting so first off i want to mention that choosing the best curriculum is evidence-based as well we are funded through fsb which um we are funded through the federal um family of education i'm so sorry i am totally oh my gosh okay sorry all right so choosing the best curriculum
013is evidence-based and it offers a wide variety of lessons we are also doing each grade level so sixth seventh and eighth grade each have their curriculum and then there are two different ones for the high school so ninth and tenth graders get choosing the best journey and then the 11th and 12th graders will get soulmate and these are all guided and ranging in the lessons as far as doing goal setting kind of trying to see what that looks like making the best decisions for themselves avoiding pregnancies avoiding stds and also avoiding the emotional consequences that can come from becoming sexually active at a young age we do talk about their futures figuring out friendships what that looks like as well so we do mention that at all levels starting in sixth grade they are adapted
014so where the eighth graders will get a little bit more content on uh social media sexting those kinds of dangers the sixth graders will still get a little bit but not as much as we try to have it be age-appropriate as well for all of them there are some statistics so specifically students who received choosing the best were 25 less likely to begin having sex by the end of 9th grade and 12 less likely to begin having sex by the beginning of 10th grade compared to those in control groups for students that did not receive the choosing the best curriculum again this is an evidence-based curricula we do a different variety of classes we arrange [Music] for it to be working working with the teachers and what works best with the schedules all of that
015as well there are some parent involvement so after every lesson we do encourage our students to take homework homework but just a task an assignment a conversation to have with their parent or caregiver trusted adult at home to kind of wrap up the discussion of the day so if we talked about um those goal settings what would that look like they go home they talk to their parents and ask the questions like well what did you want to be when you were my age and how did that work out or what can kind of hinder my chances of becoming successful with my goals and just really encourage those conversations to happen at home as well um and yeah that's what we have for the choosing the best curriculum i do apologize our powerpoint didn't make
016it so it just made me a little scattered there but please i'm happy to answer any questions and yeah we'll open up [Music] okay i think the question period will be if brown elena if you would come up and ladies if you would stay and just keep a mic and and i'm gonna open this audience up to for them to ask you questions first and then we'll ask questions after they've kind of set to kind of give us a clue of how things are going to go okay if when you get a mic from an audience if you would just state your name so we can have it hi poppy russ can i get you to stand up to i don't hear so well [Music] so when you said healthy relationship where is that coming
017from who says what's a healthy relationship where is that information coming from i'd like to know that and is this going to be optional in the classes can the parents say no i'll handle the opt it's going to be an opt-in program rather than opt-out so children and youth will have to have a permission slip to participate that is one requirement okay all through high school from elementary middle school high school all optional and then to answer your question on the healthy relationship um so for our curricula for example love notes dibble institutes is the ones that are the developers so when it's evidence-based that means it's research based medically accurate and those that curricula had to go through a study so they take a control group with a class and then that's how they
018come out with the outcomes so all of the information is coming from researchers that are experts in the field of relationship-based education do we have access to all that info yes um yes you do where um so double so dibble institutes.org um also i have the digital links if you want to access it and they have all of their research information their study information available to the public too okay if we don't agree with that what's our step and we do what do i do as a parent as a parent if you don't agree with what we have in the classes again like the board said it is an opt in program so you can choose not to have your student in the class at all in the program okay so what can we do
019actively to disagree with your program though nothing is there anything we can do but that's the purpose of these hearings to express your opinion and there's a committee we have a committee on campus that uh post their meetings and you can actually probably be a part of that and and that debate can go on inside the committee and hopefully that's a separate meeting if i i could clarify too we've incorporated the committee inside of this meeting for purposes of convenience you can speak if you want to oppose one or either curriculum feel free to do it and we'll note that so this is that's part of the purpose okay one or both ma'am no okay thank you okay and to clarify for everybody it's opt-in meaning you have to give a permission slip to participate
020those that don't there'll be an alternative assignment has nothing to do with sex ed and they will not be uh lose credit or lose points by virtue of not participating so the purpose of today is to figure out are you for it or against it if you're for it which of these two curriculums do you prefer if you're against it all together please voice that and we'll record it yes dr can we also have these two curriculums posted on our site yes we we've had them open for review we still have the information at the district office anybody that would like to come to review that may and you could either sign some out or look at it at your leisure during you know what can create a space for you it is available can
021i ask a quick question um what is the um i'm sorry i didn't get your first name poppy okay is there any specific components of the program that you don't like or you don't like the it as a whole so if we had you know if if our school and the committee decided to take one and then remove specific portions based on the needs of our students in our program would that be beneficial or is it a no is the question right right so these programs are just too large to know exactly what's being that i would taught so much more info okay and i would like to be part of that because those are that's my child right that's not necessarily in the school classroom that i would expect him to learn some of
022these things and i don't know who would be teaching them i don't know what they'd be teaching i don't know enough okay good good afternoon thank you for letting me speak my mind on this my name is kate angelos i'm retired navy and what i have investigated researched on my own evidence-based is not speaking for me because the people you asked i didn't get asked so right there i'm not for anything you've said so far however i did research house bill 2476 which governor lucy did sign making it mandatory for sex ed and the loophole to that is the opt in or opt out for the parents but the curriculum is in place okay i don't agree with that either and even in your research in your your polling there isn't a study anywhere that
023can gather and measure what a child has [Music] registered feels or thinks about something he just heard in the classroom there's nobody that can measure that and because you don't know that child needs to speak about something and he's too ashamed and afraid to say something about it and he will go on forever with that book to me that is not healthy the next thing i have to say real quick is you have a classroom of girls and boys and you haven't once said you're going to separate them they are separated in middle school by arizona law and they have to be separated for boys and girls in high school that is up to the school what they would decide to do okay that i really wasn't too clear on and also in my research
024we're talking about sex sexuality unwanted pregnancies and hiv and all of that kind of stuff okay that kind of stuff to me sounds like planned parenthood okay now also i feel if the parents are in agreeance with any of this they are being derelict in their responsibility for protecting their children and they're letting the teachers the school boards teachers union do what they should be doing at home that's my two cents worth may i just add so we i understand your concerns and i really appreciate you taking the time to share that something in our curriculum that we do not talk about is sexuality so we don't talk about anything about gender or lgbtq we don't talk about that in our curricula all we talk about are sti statistics and that's very briefly in middle
025school very we just touch on that in high school we do have more conversations about that but again it's student-led so we do facilitate it but those conversations again are age-appropriate and the materials should be transparent because if a person can be convicted of pornography what is to say what's in those textbooks isn't of the same nature only it's under the guise of education there are 27 sex offenders in showa there are 21 in lakeside and for every residents there's one sex offender that's all i have to say so is it fair to say no on both programs okay thank you thanks i think clear to the back back here we have another hi my name is carrie brewer and i have to say i reviewed fully both curriculums page by page the entire curriculum
026from 6th grade through 12th grade i liked both curriculums i thought they were very conservative in nature i appreciated the fact that it did not get into gender and sexuality i would be opposed to have been the i would be opposed to have that be taught at the school level [Music] so like i said i did appreciate aspects of both curriculum i would have to say that if i had to choose i know that you're going to choose just one curriculum for the entire school and with that i would choose the positive potential love notes i felt like the love notes for the high school curriculum was a little more up-to-date 2015 i think was the date on the arizona partnership choosing the best program in 2018 was the date published for the navajo county
027program one of my questions with having actually reviewed the curriculum was that there was quite a bit that you were not able to see because there were embedded videos that obviously as a book you were not able to review does that go outside of the written curriculum that was stated that's one of my questions and what leeway does the instructor have to deviate from the written curriculum i was okay with what was taught written but i want to make sure that that is actually what will be taught in the classroom and then what oversight will you have to make sure that the written curriculum is being followed will there be instructors in the classroom i could just see how a topic such of this could veer very quickly off track so what safeguards will be
028in place to keep it geared towards the curriculum as written thank you and was that directed towards myself or all of us i i don't know which curriculum will be chosen that was just strictly my opinion but for both of you how what safeguards are in place to to prevent fearing off of the curriculum as written thank you for your question um so i'll speak for navajo county um so when we say evidence-based again the curricula is scripted so we cannot go off script so all of the information that you read that is what we teach as far as what safeguards are in place there's things we have to do on our end so when we report we are funded by arizona department of health services so we have to report at the end of
029each class if we followed fidelity meaning how close did you follow to that every day at the end of each at the end of each lesson that's what we have to report and then we also have in class um basically we're viewed as instructors so there's you typically two instructors in each class so we keep each other on task as well as someone from the state will also come up and view us as instructors to make sure that we are following the curriculum as written yes and for the arizona youth partnership choosing the best we have the same protocols we do have to do a fidelity check after every session and we also have to follow a script as well and i think uh yeah that's pretty much it so we are also following that
030as well just as a follow-up on that the parts of the curriculum i believe in the navajo county curriculum where there were embedded videos um those we were not able to review um like i said i did review all of all i spent hours reviewing all of the material of both curriculum is there a way to review that or is there any way to know that does it deviate from what is written no um so for the videos um is it in the preview that you weren't able to the preview on the website you weren't able to view the videos so i came in in person and reviewed the books at the district office so we have the usds that have the videos um so i don't know if there's a way that we could
031post them but if you ever wanted to review them as a as a parent or member of the community um you're welcome to reach out to our program and we can you know give you the we can't check you out the usd but you can come to the office and review them um and i believe you know maybe this will work i believe you left a couple we have them at the district office you'd like to view them in the district office you may okay thank you yes ma'am and then um if a child asks a question and it is not part of your script how do you answer that question so it may deviate far from the written curriculum yes so that is where we really have to be um again on task because
032we do get students that ask questions and it's it's it's natural for them to ask questions at this time especially during the topics that we discuss we always try to recirculate if it starts going off topic say okay guys we're getting off topic but remember going back to what we were talking about and then we go back on to the the topic at hand so it doesn't veer too far away from the the core material as well as it doesn't start going into subjects that may be offensive or outside of the scope of our program sorry and then for acyp um when we have any questions that are presented to us that year off the curriculum we redirect focus back to the curriculum and then also encourage our students to have that conversation maybe ask
033the question to their safe trusted adult parent caregiver thank you for answering that um one final just comment on this i know in both curriculums it did it spent the majority of the time discussing positive relationships and having safe relationships with friends before it ever gets into anything sexual and i know specifically just remembering the navajo county program it was chapter 11 before they discuss any of that so the first 10 chapters plus is 100 just building good healthy relationships with peers so hi my name is irene davis thank you for your time i appreciate everybody that's here um as a parent of blue ridge district um i was under the information of arizona state title 15 article 15 that it is my right as a parent to sit into a class or to come
034and volunteer in a classroom okay and i was denied twice once last year when i was trying to put my son into pre-kindergarten at the head start over here and this year when i put him into the kindergarten at the elementary school down there on penrod and i asked why and i was informed by an office personnel clerk that it's because the campus is a lock campus and they will be ushered in and out by a teacher's aide to the parent drop off and pick up access points and i asked i said that sounds kind of different to me because in the all my i have six children of all ages and i have seven grandchildren and we were always encouraged to um volunteer help read to the kids help in there you know participate
035whatever it is story time so when i heard this i was a little uh befuddled actually and i was also informed when the person was telling me this that even the lunch people have to bring the carts with the lunches leave it outside the door ring the bell they have their person come get the cart bring it in and then they put the empty cart out and the lunch person comes gets the cart brings it back into the kitchen so that as a parent threw a flag on the field because i didn't know what to make of that maybe somebody can help me understand what that's about ma'am i'm sorry but we were do you have a question on the sex ed program certainly could you get to that one and i'd be glad to
036deal with that question also arizona uh uh title 15 102 paragraphs one through six it says educators can use their professional discretion and use supplemental materials uh in instructing their curriculum okay what i wanna know is will i be able to review that curriculum before they implement it in the classroom yes and this is the curriculum that would be used educators are not able to supplement on the sex ed curriculum those curriculums are prescribed they're talking about if i'm teaching history and it's world war ii and you have something you want to add into that that would be an enrichment which is fully appropriate but what i'm suggesting is you may have a lot of questions that i can help you with but it has nothing to do with sex ed i think okay well
037i'm not done yet well ma'am here's the deal we have problem this is a hearing for sex ed it's not for all these other issues so it's the board's it's the board's president's decision um my request is we can table that and i'll be glad to visit with her unless it has something a sex ed i i do have something about the sex ed and given the fact that she was able to ask and answer many questions i would like my opportunity okay um i do realize this is a very sensitive subject and i do understand there's many layers like this one mom miss poppy over here addressed and i think that parents should be the main people instructing their children on these subjects because they are so sensitive if you talk to your child
038at home and say johnny we don't hug and kiss little girls in kindergarten first grade that's not appropriate and then johnny goes to class and somebody said whatever okay um he's getting a mixed message there so what that shows me is that makes that student awkward it makes him feel kind of out of place when he goes back into the classroom because now mommy and daddy told him something and then he goes into the classroom and hears something else okay it's gonna make that student a little awkward with whatever he is hearing possibly confused okay and then another thing too in the high school level there are students that that will have questions but because they're in amongst their peers they may be embarrassed they may be uh feeling ashamed for some some girls they
039have already had situations maybe out of their control and now they've got really big questions that they need to ask if we're working on a script we're taking the general population consensus i'm understanding that and you've got some heavy questions that's going on okay we're talking about real life i mean i i'm not going to get crazy graphic or none of that don't worry i'm not going to flip you out but if something happened to susie and she's trying to process that and she comes to her counselor or her her person that she's dealing with in the class and says my uncle so-and-so did abcd oh my gosh what do i do now are they going to suggest let's go to the nurse and see if maybe we can figure out like abortion alternatives or
040something aren't there are we going to excuse me excuse me i think that's what this is for and that's what the committee is for your concerns can be addressed directly to the committee and it'd be awesome if you would come in and sit down with the committee and the counselors and express those concerns the specifics that you're doing right here i think i think everybody's afraid of those things and appreciate your input and your passion thank you very much [Music] may i address some of the yes so from what i understood i do appreciate you taking your time um so what understood it sounds like there is a concern over maybe a conflict of values maybe um so with our educators uh we are values neutral so when we go into the classroom we don't
041put our personal opinion we don't our personal values [Music] the spiritual that means that person sends a personal value so a person might have a faith-based background we don't talk about faith it's just that person's sense of right and wrong their sense of personal value for them so when they're making decisions how is it impacting them are they making decisions that are in alignment with their personal values are they making decisions that are against that because they're succumbing to peer pressure that's what that means it's not talking about religion or anything like that from our from our stance does that sense because um if a child has been no make taught at home that they should stay clean before marriage because sex is designed for marriage that bonds the nationality according to the bible i
042thought the united states was based on christian native christian foundation and for a christian nation i'm sure most people understand that and so if johnny learns that i shouldn't have sex outside of marriage and goes into the classroom and they have a neutral zone which i appreciate that but that's gonna send a mixed message because you're gonna say it's okay if you do decide to have sex just use the ponder or if you decide to have a relationship that's of the same sex it's okay because we're gonna accept different genders the bible says that certain things are not permitted now i'm [Applause] [Music] thank you i'll make a note [Music] thanks appreciate your passion that's what we wanted to hear i think some of the specifics about getting into the school campuses can be worked
043out with the principals i know my wife volunteers she had to go through a process she can go in because she has a pass to do so parents just can't walk into the classroom anymore because of the society because the things that happened it's not the way it was when you raised your kids it's different so appreciate that talk to your local principal you know the principals in the in elementary the junior high and high school they can help you through that situation good evening my name is lorenzo santana good evening school board members and thank you for giving us the opportunity to speak and express our concerns and ask questions this evening a couple questions that i have kind of right off the bat is this a comprehensive sex ed both of these curriculums
044here so our program is comprehensive sex ed um and i'll let you like the answer the sexual risk avoidance so we are an abstinence-based program in which we will encourage our students to abstain and that is the only 100 way to guarantee that they are not going to expose themselves to stds unplanned pregnancies or emotional consequences also all of our staff are meditated mandated reporters through the state so if a situation a situation comes up that a student discloses something to us we do have to report that to the teacher and then follow the school's procedures as well if that situation were to come up just to answer that okay when i looked on your website i wasn't able to see many of the lessons for each of the curriculums i saw a couple of
045them and you know i know that in order to get a good understanding of it you got to really look through each lesson that's where the meat and the bones and everything that so i haven't had a chance to do it sounds like some here have but i did find a website here and on your website it also states that it meets like the national standards uh for sex ed and so forth right okay all right so um so we found this organization called family watch international i believe they're here out of gilbert arizona their website is familywatch.org you want to write that down familywatch.org and comprehensivesexualityeducation.org write those down please look those up so they actually review and evaluate and score many of the comprehensive sex ed curriculums that are being promoted in u.s
046public schools and also internationally and we found that in this cse harmful analysis tool that love notes 3.0 had a score of 11 out of 15. so 11 of the harmful effects comprehensive sex ed were listed on there in this curriculum and i actually forwarded that pdf on that analysis tool to score some of the school board members so when you look at your email you'll probably be able to see that there so some of the things that were listed on here some of the harmful elements of like normalizing sex watching music videos with graphic scenes teen conversations about having constant casual sex pushing girlfriends to have sex all the time being a throwaway girl faking orgasms role-playing scenarios about graphic sex scenes i'll give you consent to sex talking about giving consent to sex
047children actually do not have the legal right to give consent to sex the law does not recognize that right and in most cases it's illegal and it's a crime so csc actually teaches them about consent but it doesn't teach them about pedophilia it doesn't teach him about statutory rape he doesn't teach him about grooming and that's what most of the csd programs are doing comprehensive sexuality education it also normalizes and promotes homosexual bisexual behavior um discussions on sexual pleasures and orgasms that promotes premature sexual autonomy planning how to get it how to get her to give it to you how to cultivate your north star for sexuality and these are these are excerpts that are taken out of the love notes 3.0 um your time for you to choose your own time for when you
048want to have sex so you know because of these findings we don't approve the love note 3.0 and we don't approve the other one either and just real quick for those that don't know who com comprehensive sexual education is it's it's really not a curriculum it's not an education it's an indoctrination that's what it is it's a trojan horse it presents itself as something good and safe and needed when on the outside but an insight is something nefarious and harmful to our children to our families to our schools and to our society as a whole and it's a radical social ideology it's being forced upon our children and our schools and there's well-funded um international pressure groups including planned parenthood that have been really successful in pushing this csc into a lot of american public
049schools and attempting schools and other countries to use it as well but it's an agenda-driven curriculum it sexualizes children it is beyond just teaching about stds and pregnancy and the biology of sex reproduction which is fine kids should learn that at the appropriate ages but it becomes very progressive radical ideas that most people are really naturally repulsed by and it teaches children there are sexual beings from birth it teaches children that they have sexual rights and freedoms it teaches children that they can have sex with anyone wherever they want at any age as long as there's two things present consent and a condom and that is wrong that is wrong to teach children even teenagers and it teaches children to question their gender promotes gender dysphoria and planned parenthood is one of the biggest writers
050of this um csc and it distributes a lot of propaganda around the world and it's commodifying our children and making our children the product and the reason they want to sexualize children is because there's billions and billions of dollars in it when they become sexually active as early as possible there's billions of dollars in the abortion industry billions of dollars in the gender transition industry most of those that regret that after they go through those gender transitions and it grooms them for sexual abuse by perverts in many of these industries and so i mean there's many more things that i want to say here where there's only a couple minutes left but i think that we as parents should be given time to thoroughly review these curriculums so we can decide whether we think they're
051good for the children for our kids for our community for our society and you know there are several um laws here in arizona that that have been passed that you know classes have to be separated by boys and girls and sex ed must stress abstinence and sex ed should be opt-in not opt-out and must be age-appropriate stress stds and so forth and so forth um and as far as the national standards there really aren't any congress hasn't passed any law that in that regard the federal government doesn't get involved in sex ed it's a lie there is no national standards required for the state board or local boards to adopt it's organizations like planned parenthood and their partners that create these standards and then call them national standards but on a national level state legislators
052aren't passing these comprehensive sex ed bills yet yet and that's the key because we as families we need to ensure that our our schools are not promoting harmful messages about human sexuality to our children or any child and we need to let the schools know that we're present we're informed we're watching and we're prepared to act and we need to work together to protect our children against these things so we are against both these curriculums and my wife actually um wanted to mention a couple of things from that pdf that compares those documents um yes the love notes 3.0 i see you shaking your head like the curriculum doesn't actually say things like this but one of the harmful ones is it sexualizes children they give a relationship scenario page 104 it says when we're
053in public or around his friends he treats me like i'm nothing the only time he really is kind and considerate is when he wants sex if i'm not going to be his or anybody's booty call i deserve better on breaking up with him and then it tells the student to go to consider playing the optional music video till it happens to you by lady gaga found at the end of the slideshow it's important to warn there are graphic scenes in this video that some may not wish to view and that's on page 155 of the curriculum of love notes and then also you had mentioned that it does not promote homosexual or bisexual behavior but it actually normalizes and promotes acceptance or exploration of diverse sexual orientations sometimes in violation of state education laws and
054page six all youth oh my goodness but just did it happen to me sorry okay i'll just read this one here's another one that um it breaks promotes tran transden trans gender ideology it promotes affirmation and or exploration of diverse gender identities may teach children they can change their gender identity as multiple genders or may present other unscientific and medically inaccurate theories fails to teach that most gender confused children resolve their confusion by adulthood and that extreme gender confusion is a mental health disorder which is known as gender dysphoria that can be helped with mental health intervention on page six um the same page as the other statement i was trying to make and i got cut off but all youth regardless of sexual orientation have attractions emotions and desires for healthy relationships all youth
055needs skills and knowledge to navigate the relationship and make y sexual choices this is an lgbtq inclusive curriculum page 180 states marriage is a legal and social commitment between two people regardless of gender identity or orientation page 251 points out that ann and cj are a boy girl relationship but their situation can apply to a couple of any identity or orientation page 255 but there are other emotional and social risks that can affect anyone any gender identity orientation that hear less about if you go into like my husband was saying the harmful elements of cse.org you will find all these curriculums and all of the elements that they break and what they're teaching trying to teach are children and you know i have children and i i am a love for children and i am
056not gonna just stand here and be okay with what they are trying to promote this propaganda that's shoving down their throats at the very early tender age of preschool it's not going to happen it's not going to happen with me thank you miss santana this is only for sixth grade and up and and my own personal comment is this whatever curriculum the board decides to choose if we choose to choose a curriculum it's not going to be an advertisement or a a recruitment for a different lifestyle or anything like that that's that's not the purpose of sex education and i hope we can get the bottom line with some parent input so that we get what we need and not what society would force on us that's that's the key that's what we want to
057do mr antenna one more question one more comment yeah right may i comment all right no this is not a debate actually you have to stand sit and hold my hands well all right thank you everybody else had to okay all right first of all i wanted to thank you for making it an opt in and not opt out that makes it um as a parent i just really appreciate that having the option to see if this is something i want and if i don't we just won't do it but i did want to know on the opt in philosophy is there going to be an option to opt in for certain lessons and out of other lessons for example in your guys's model very first lesson sixth grade what is a god obviously to
058a person of faith calling god a um you know not referring to him as a proper noun but merely a noun is super offensive than a faith-based um just in a faith-based culture so would they have the option so it's a typo okay so so the copy you gave me is really fuzzy so that actually helps because that was super alarming i'm like lesson one what's a god okay good glad we could clear that one up um so statistically speaking does your career or how much of your curriculum actually i'll ask this question first does your curriculum cover comprehensive biology anatomy and physiology specific to human reproduction so for the positive potential there's an optional lesson for that on puberty in sixth grade that's up to the schools if they want to have that and
059then in love notes um i believe at the end towards the end of chapters 11 through 13 um there is discussion on again it's nothing that you wouldn't see in a doctor's office but it is biology of the human anatomy for our curriculum we do not offer any of the comprehensive or biology aspects of that okay so as a parent i find that alarming that when we're talking about a comprehensive sexual education curriculum where we're trying to teach our children what sex is what their body is their changing body what's happening i find it alarming that it's covered in one short optional paragraph in your curriculum and then three more intensive lessons or not paragraphs but but lessons but not clear to 11th or 12th grade so i know things are different than when i
060went to school i did go to a community that sex education was very like it was common i had it in fourth grade sixth grade seventh grade and it continued through high school but it was a curriculum that covered biology anatomy and physiology so i find it concerning that we're calling this a sexual education curriculum while not covering sexual education so um what is the overall message or theme for avoiding unplanned pregnancy in the curriculums so the overall message for avoiding it in what like can you expand a bit on that what do you mean so you're obviously trying to avoid an unplanned pregnancy both of you guys said that that was the point of the program in what way are you are you teaching the students to avoid unplanned pregnancy um so teaching them
061to avoid implying pregnancy by letting them know first of all we start off with them setting their goals so what are things that they want to achieve in life and we do talk about how it can make things difficult to finish your goals and reach your goals when you have a child at a young age so so if i understand your curriculum is focused more at an unplanned birth not at avoiding an unplanned pregnancy well no unplanned pregnancy in general okay for our curriculum we do abstinence-based so we do encourage the abstaining of any sexual activity um until a life-committed relationship like marriage um and then also we i'm sorry could you repeat the second part of that question i just wanted to know what was your overall message for avoiding unplanned pregnancy what are
062you teaching the students to do to avoid an unplanned pregnancy right so the avoiding the unplanned pregnancy is the abstinence pace um at the beginning and then uh there is a lesson in there that talks about choices and that will then be in turn discussed with the the parents as well like what choices would they have but no lenience towards one way or another but it is mentioned in our curriculum so is it safe to say that the message that you're sending is one avoid sex before you're ready to become pregnant and two if you don't make that choice are you trying to prevent pregnancy or end pregnancy we would be trying to prevent pregnancy however our main message is the sexual risk avoidance of 100 abstaining then means 100 reduction or 100 chance of
063not getting an std unplanned pregnancy or any emotional consequences okay and can you answer the same question yes so since we're comprehensive so we still offer obstinance as the number one choice to 100 percent not guaranteed not get pregnant but we do talk about contraception options we do not discuss abortion as that by arizona law that's illegal we're not allowed to discuss that in the class okay does your curriculum cover sexual harassment which seems to be an ongoing issue in our schools yes so in the high school levels in love notes is a healthy relationship based education so we just do discuss unhealthy relationships and dating violence and so within those pieces there are segments we do discuss sexual harassment what that looks like and if a student is experiencing that what can they do
064so what avenues they can go to which we always encourage talk to a trusted adult and trusted adult can be a parent caregiver someone on campus that's a teacher counselor and have them aware of the situation so that they can get the help that they need if they're experiencing sexual harassment or assault okay same there are lessons that will cover that as well and then we do the same process if the student needs to disclose to anybody that they are experienced something then they what are the steps to go through so we do also cover that in our curriculum all right do either of your curriculums discuss the the pitfalls and harms of pornography yes in seventh grade in positive potential in the dangers of social media it talks about dangers of pornography and how
065it impacts the adolescent brain how in pornography does not show healthy relationships how it's often violent and it perpetuates unrealistic expectations and actually how it has the same effect on the adolescent brain as drugs and alcohol and how it impacts the relationship so we do talk about the pitfalls of pornography just a minute another question for you in that teaching does it include instructing the students that showing pornography to other students is a form of sexual abuse in the curriculum it does not cover that okay so our curriculum will cover that as well in the eighth grade and the high school levels um as far as you know what that means what that looks like but the same it does not cover that last piece that you mentioned so so neither curriculum teaches children that's
066spreading the pornography about in the school is actually a crime and that it's a form of sexual abuse written curriculum however the thing with the developers especially if there are parents that are saying hey this is more of what i want to see or this is what i don't want to see we don't have the authority to change the curriculum however we can always reach out to the developers and say hey based on our community these are the things that parents are saying that they'd like to see or they'd like to be taken out of the curricula and then that would be up to the developers to incorporate that into a future update okay um sorry our one of our lessons does actually cover sexting and the dangers of sexting and then the legal consequences
067that can come from that yeah which would cover the individual or the individuals involved potentially appear involved which could be terrible i'm just talking about pornography in general um the students do spread it about somewhat in the school and it is you know it's a form of sexual abuse and so i'm just wondering if in this comprehensive sexual education they will be taught that um does your curriculum thoroughly cover st sdis stds other harmful diseases yes so again in positive potential so the middle school level in seventh grade and eighth grade levels we do talk about stis stds and then in love notes again those last chapters 11 chapter 11 i believe we discussed stis and the reason that love notes has all of those components at the end is because we're building it from
068the foundation up if we they just introduce stis right off the first lesson a lot of students would be uncomfortable with that topic so it gives them time to understand us understand the class get comfortable with the material but then also have a background to build off of once we get to that section on stis so we do cover that okay what are the required credentials and the education level for the instructors we must be trained by the developers of these curricula and so what that means is we go down to the arizona department of health services we are trained from those specific developers and it's usually a three-day training and we must teach back and they evaluate us and they determine if we have passed their criteria in order to be considered yes you
069can teach this or no you don't have the skill set that we're looking for to teach this so we have to have certification in each curriculum in order to teach it and what level of education do you have to have to qualify for certification so it's open for our program our educators have bachelors in their they have bachelor's myself i do have a high school level education so yes so most of our educators have bachelor's degrees but they do also have high school education there's continued education opportunities as well and same we have to be certified through our curriculum as well to be able to present and implement the program to fidelity okay so i guess that my last comments and this is just quick it's not prepared i just got all this information and
070i'm trying to formulate a response for the board i really think that um sexual education can be an important component in and in a school's education especially if it's an opt-in approach where parents are choosing the things that best support their needs at home however i am very concerned that neither of these particular curriculums seem to be covering sexual education their focus seems to be primarily on relationships um and so if we're going to call it sexual education we need to actually have it be what it what you know we're saying it is we wouldn't tell a student that they're going to a biology class and then talk about nasa the whole time um so we definitely need to use the correct labels for transparency purposes also i i think that we need to consider
071like how this is being presented sexual education is predominantly a biological topic obviously there's other components to that but again that should be the focus and if we have um and we have well-qualified teachers at blue ridge many many teachers holding master's degrees and above i think that it's important that as our students are being taught these subjects we should think about what their background in counseling is especially when we say we've heard the term age-appropriate over and over and over who determines age-appropriate i would hope that somebody who studied child development would be the ones determining what's age-appropriate and would be leading those discussions so like for example we have counselors here at the school that are very good at working with the children and they understand age-appropriate um so i don't really like
072the idea of leaving it on a curriculum alone to determine age appropriate sure somebody created that curriculum and maybe it made sense for their area where they were writing it but our kids might ask different questions or they might have a different focus and it would be nice to know that those moderating these very sensitive topics have a lot of experience in this area so another idea would be like whether they would be a health professional perhaps they have a background in nursing or their doctor or something like that so that's just my feedback um i i'm not necessarily against a comprehensive sexual education program on campus um especially for an opt-in but let's make sure that's what it is thank you i think we need to limit maybe one or two more we have
073to start this next meeting but i do think we will probably have a follow-up meeting before our next hearing with the committees so people can come and there won't be a time limit on it if that's all right and get more questions answered and perhaps help the family put together a comprehensive group of ideas to give to the board so thank you we'll have two more okay my name is gail told i'm a new parent to the district i am a retired educator of 30 years in high school i have a couple of questions about the curriculum i had no idea any of this was going on until i got the email whenever that came out so i have a lot of questions and i want to know first of all how many different programs
074were considered until you came down to two different programs what those other programs might have been and this could be something that would be at your committee meeting um yes i'd like to know that yes to those questions yeah that would be something the committee has put together and they would like to know when the committees yeah i don't know who's who's [Music] who is spurring out the committee head who's who's in charge of that committee and when they meet dr wright that would be that to be dr right that's me so it's evident there's a lot of questions and there's still information that's needed so what i would i propose is we will have a date and we'll post it 14 days in advance and one of the reasons there's a lot of people
075here we've made it because we've made a concerted effort to make sure people know this is not something we're trying to you know pass through into the guys of night or midnight so we can have well i'll get with the administration team i'll get with our facilities i'll see where when this room is open and we'll give 14 days advance i'll ask these ladies to come back and we'd be glad to have a meeting for as long as you want to talk and so i would say we'd probably start it to give people that are working a chance at 5 30 till the cows come home i do have another question the materials are on display at this point in time and how how long will they stay available to us to review they've been
076on display since may and they're on display now in the district office that will will remain on display until after june excuse me september well it could be the october board meeting when the board decides okay so this is scheduled maybe for october for a decision by the board is that october would be the decision point making for the board would we get an email saying when this committee would meet so that we could yes plan ahead if and if you want to if you'd like to do that make sure you leave your contact information with mary ford and we're glad to include you in that and what we'll do is as the president is directed we'll have a separate committee meeting before the next hearing which is september 22nd bless you okay thank you
077very much i appreciate your time yes ma'am could we have somebody other than the same person speak i know it's nice you get a thought you want to give it so let's have i hope so we have we have about six minutes for two more questions two more questions um i have a master's degree in health education and just retired from teaching 7th and 9th grade health in alaska which um and i just wanted to say wholeheartedly support abstinence until marriage um however i really strongly feel that having discussions in school is a really good idea i think that the more we can have conversations about this the better off we are our students are bombarded by the media 24 7 and they have maybe one or two conversations with their parents in their lifetime
078and we need to have more conversations about it with them and i know some parents do a lot better job than that but i don't think the majority of parents do a lot better job than that and so um i would suggest actually opt out if i was choosing because the most at-risk parents often don't fill out the permission slips and those are the kids who don't have conversations with their parents at home and um i just for the record promote or i would i would support either one of these um programs and i would encourage parents to go to the school and listen to the presentations and then go home and have a conversation with your kids about your values i don't think that them hearing something that you disagree with at school is
079necessarily bad if you have a follow-up conversation with them and say hey this is what do you think about this this is what i think about this this is what we believe is our family thinks about this that it opens up a lot of conversation opportunities for you to have with your kid um that should be should be happening and it it allows them to know what their peers are saying what other people are saying and it just provides a lot of opportunity for families to think about it i had kids in my class literally after the end of some of these discussions that were like wow i think i'm going to wait now i mean they'd never even the idea of waiting hadn't even ever crossed their mind before and after these presentations they
080were like these are really good ideas these are really good reasons to wait and so um they were actually committed to weight after having the the lessons in schools um so i think not discussing is is a disservice to our community and we need to give them some reasons to wait some skills to stand up to peer pressure and some skills to set boundaries thank you one more thank you i my name is lenny hoover and i came maybe to offer a solution i'm a retired principal uh they used to work for you guys as a vice principal at the high school i moved on and i've actually taught sex ed of course it was in a baptist church so i guess that doesn't count or remember leviticus and numbers deuteronomy but i as a
081principal in phoenix at an inner city school i had six pregnancies in one year in my brand new sixth grade that was added with six teachers and that's six teachers that were self-contained units that means you know 35 38 kids to each teacher rather large and we had six pregnancies and there were canned curriculums that type of thing and i'm not going to comment because i've only looked at your curriculums for about an hour and a half and talk to people i'm not going to comment on the advisability of either one i do believe in opt out but what do you do with those kids that are opting out sometimes they're stigmatized do they really have meaningful work to do so what i did was i had islamic folks i had 19 different languages in
082my school i had catholics i had baptist bless the mormons heart they're the only a really large group of people that i had from my parent council that wanted to serve on it and we started recruiting all of those people from different backgrounds and we had them sit down with the teachers and i would start the meetings but i kind of got out of it and i let those mothers and i let the teachers work on what sixth grade is a young grade on what they would talk about what they wish covered and then where there needed to be professional biological that type of thing components added i had my professional staff to it and the parents okayed that we turned that school around i want you to know it was in federal improvement when
083we took it it was a b-plus school when i left seven years later there were seven fights a day when i started there were about seven fights a year when i left it took time i'm not saying it didn't but anything worth doing and our children are really worth teaching and teaching well and i am not happy with the way things are going federally in our government of course since ducey's recommended it i almost don't know what to say about that that we have to have sex ed curriculum but there are other options you could even pick and go through have parent councils go through a curriculum with selected and then do an opt-in opt-out by the unit and make sure all materials are specifically stated what is going to be in that unit so
084people that are teaching you can't bring stuff in optionally that they wish i hope i've not insulted anybody thank you for listening to me thank you i appreciate it appreciate your wisdom your guidance and your knowledge when it comes to that touchy subject we're having to deal with right now so man wouldn't be great if you were part of the committee hey we want your name and address and email so you can be a part of that and give give some information appreciate your your background okay i think we're probably gonna have to call this right now so that we can uh gear up for the next school board meeting where the the regular schedule meeting we invite you all to stay we'll take a brief pause because we have to stop the feed right
085now and we'll have to start the feed up again so we can broadcast the regular school board meeting so that will conclude this hearing we'll have information sent out as to when the next interim hearing will be and then we will have another one the 22nd i guess isn't it 22nd have a committee meeting to be announced the date next year the next hearing i'm sorry will be the 22nd all right thank you thank you very much