001we're good all right well welcome everybody to the 19th september 22 meeting of the board of education for yellow springs uh tonight is a work session so there will be no votes we're just going to be discussing a single topic tonight which is uh sex and health education curriculum so i guess with that let's take it away and do uh do the wrong okay barriers here okay here i'm playing here magnus turner here all right we have a phone if you don't need it all right so i'd like to acknowledge everybody here and everybody watching at home or we'll be tuning in later thanks for joining us all right that should be our preliminary matters versus present and then into the boardwalk session so 2.1 we had a letter submitted to to the board a
002little while ago so thank you um lori asklen and sarah sparrowman for writing that to us and getting getting this conversation started we appreciate that and uh we wanted to take the time to make a board work session so we could really talk to it so i think what we're going to do is move to 2.2 because that's the curriculum in the discussion right sorry is it 2.1 so i want to introduce joy fiola joy is the assistant principal at um the middle school high school and then shannon marando is a high school counselor and they are actually going to going to walk us through this tonight and so i think after talking to them it might be easier if you just let them go through and then at the end we'll kind of circle
003back and answer questions and and i've asked them to stay close to the screen so we can maybe capture the screen as well as the sound awesome but the presentation's online right you can go forward pull it down and follow up that is correct so uh just kind of an overview of this presentation so we kind of go through um we start with the national sex education standards and then we kind of go through ohio and what they say we have to do ohio doesn't actually have actual standards for health education but they have a ton of revised code which is what we are required to follow whereas in other subjects they have specific standards it's a little bit different for health education and sexual education as well so and then we'll talk about um
004what we're currently doing and where we're kind of headed in the future um so so to start off one of the one of the things that came up in the letter was how do we go about choosing curriculum and making sure that it's inclusive and you know that we are accepting everyone and addressing all different types of um intersectionalities that we have that might be different than some other school districts have and so for that we really use the national sex education standards and i'm going to have ms morano talk about that because she's very very familiar with this so my my work history is that i spent 17 years at planned parenthood um doing sexuality education and then um eventually moving up to be the education and training manager for planned parenthood southwest ohio
005i had a lot of opportunities to travel nationally and meet a lot of national experts um regarding sexuality education and what works for young people and how how we need to do it so that we can be comprehensive to meet everyone's needs a really wonderful website and it's actually linked into this presentation is the advocates for youth website uh they developed 2020 is the most recent version is this is the second iteration of the sexual education standards and what they did was try to try to tie what they know works and what is developmentally and age appropriate to the things that people are teaching in schools and so they go grade level vibrate levels so uh for instance at the end of second grade regarding anatomy and physiology um children should know what their body
006parts are called and basically a little bit about what they do right so it kind of goes along and you can you can read all of those there they're available right there one of the things that's really amazing about advocates for youth is that it's been on the cutting edge of what's what works and what includes everyone so they took their sort of uh their approach from um some of the eastern european countries the denmark the netherlands and germany who have very forthright sexuality education they talk about condoms with just about everybody kids know that what they're really what their really their real goal is is to get young people to think about their behaviors and the outcomes of their behaviors in terms of what's right for me and what's right for my partner in
007conjunction with with what their parents values are if they have cultural values religious values you know just kind of helps them tie everything all together young people in those countries delay intercourse a couple of years later than children in the united states and um one of the reasons why is because they feel so open and honest talking about it they talk to their parents nothing's hidden you know if sex isn't a bad and dirty thing it is appropriate when you're in a healthy relationship where people are able to give consent uh know what they're consenting to and and all of those things so i we just included that link in here for your reference and review um and that's kind of where where you really need to start and everything in here is hyperlink so
008especially if you're following at home you can easily click on all these things and it takes you to the appropriate place so so next we have um an overview and the way ohio is set up for for sexual education and health in general is there's a set of k-6 requirements instead of seven and eight and then a set of nine twelve and so we're going to go a little more into detail with those go for it which one uh just this one yep got it you don't have to click on anything so um all of this is coming from ohio revised code remember i said that ohio doesn't actually have specific health or sexual education standards they actually say that they never will but it's always going to be governed by this ohio revised code
009which is obviously what we have to follow go ahead so uh lots of jargon and kind of legal stuff but basically this section of ohio revised code covers everything that you are required to teach k-12 essentially um so it talks about language arts and math and every subject but specifically number five talks about health education so this is where we get all of our guidance for what we have to do so in everything k-12 you have to talk about the nutritive value of foods the harmful effects of drugs and alcohol including tobacco including vapes you have to be on there now electronic smoking devices um so and then starting in seventh grade so 712 ohio has a whole separate set of things where you have to talk about venereal disease education that's what ohio calls
010sexual education as a whole um so yeah very sad just wait i've read so so they refer so every time you see venereal disease they're talking about sexual education as a whole not just stds or so it's a little misleading um so that specific part starting in seventh grade seven through twelve a parent can actually opt out of that based on written requests so which has to do with and ms murano will talk about this a little bit later we send home letters about well there's basically two different forms which i'll get into so um that'll make more sense in a minute but so k through six you also have to talk about personal safety and assault prevention so again you're looking at kind of that sexual education as a whole kind of what ms
011verano was referring to this is my body these are my parts things like that so it's more of a developmentally appropriate approach to that talking about safety and kind of assault prevention once you get to seventh grade now we have to include dating violence including warning signs and characteristics of healthy relationships a parent cannot opt out of that so there's no opt out for that specific dating violence section you also have to cover surprisingly k-12 you have to cover prescription abuse specifically opioids that was part of house bill 367. it was a big settlement and they give you specific resources of how you are to cover this you specifically have to talk about heroin methamphetamines things like that okay we also have to cover the process of making an anatomical gift and the benefits of
012making an anatomical gift and the life-saving and life-enhancing effects of organ and tissue donation this is starting next school year there is a whole new set of requirements that are kind of added in addition to all of this so starting next school year um which instead of just saying 23-24 they put it in this weird two years after march 24th 2021 but it's the 23-24 school year we will have to provide a grade 6 through 12 one hour or one standard class period which for us is about 53 minutes um that covers suicide awareness and prevention and we have to have one hour that covers safety training and violence prevention and a parent can opt out of that as well okay also we have to have six this is still six through twelve we have
013to cover starting next school year one hour at least regarding social inclusion instruction and a parent can also act out of social inclusion instruction so and then they're just saying here that whatever instruction we provide it has to be approved by the department of education and it has to be based on their revised code and it has to meet their requirements and also that we as a district can teach that using a student assembly digital learning or homework um i can tell you from our perspective we're not going to teach it in homework it's it's going to be part of our class instruction so but a school district can do that that can meet the requirement okay so this is kind of the legal jargon around the specific dating violence prevention education curriculum and what
014this one basically says is that the department of education has to give us links on their website to free curriculum that addresses dating violence prevention the way that they want us to address it and then it also gives permission for a parent or legal guardian of a student who is less than to actually review that instructional material if they would like so you would make that request to the principal and then within a reasonable amount of time we would allow you to come in and review that specific and this is just around dating violence so just that specific curriculum okay so now we get into the venereal disease education emphasizing abstinence which is what this whole entire code is about so this is where it gets more detailed okay so remember these are things that
015we have to teach so we are required to have course material and instruction in venereal disease education which according to the state of ohio should stress that students should abstain from sexual activity until after marriage it should teach all aspects of participating in sexual activity outside of marriage so the side effects of that it should also teach that having children out of wedlock can be harmful and the consequences that are associated with that for the child the parents and society as a whole it's also going to talk about sexually transmitted diseases that those are a hazard of sexual activity um and it talks about we have to discuss financial laws and responsibility pertaining to parents of children whether they are born in or out of wedlock so we have to explain all that and then
016we have to also cover criminal code so basically going over the actual definition of sexual assault what constitutes sex things like that but based on the ohio revised code we also have to emphasize that adoption is a good option for an unintended pregnancy and this whole thing that i just said is something that students can opt out of through that 33 13 60 i shouldn't say the students the parents of the student as long as they are under 18. and this is seven through 12 old so this is not k-6 okay we also have to teach that sexual activity has the same meaning as what they say in the ohio revised code which really covers man woman it's kind of it's pretty plain and boring um and then we also have to emphasize so not
017just teach but emphasize that abstinence is the only protection that is 100 effective against pregnancy stds on and on the sexual activity in the ohio revised code is kind of an umbrella term too so underneath that there's um sexual um sexual conduct which is a penetrative kind of sex and then there's also sexual contact which is a non-penetrated kind of sexual behavior and so the laws go through um you know which ones are conduct defenses and uh what is the uh what could be the consequences of that and then it will it starts with like the higher felonies and then it moves into the misdemeanors that are mostly contact defenses except for um except for the first one and it also covers age limits which changes everything so uh 13 year olds with someone who
018is less than 16 but then if somebody's over 16 then we go into a whole different realm of categories it's very specific so it's pretty confusing for students to understand if they're under 13 it's a whole different thing if they're under 10 it's a whole different thing um so so we kind of go into all of that kids find it riveting too they've basically told them yeah so they don't they don't know what those words mean they hear sexual battery and they don't know what that means and so i actually really love teaching that part of sex ed because it gives them enough knowledge on their own to go i don't want to do that you know i know what my what my boundaries are right okay so that's what ohio says we have to
019do ohio says that as a school district we can choose to go beyond that however if we go beyond that we must send something out and we must have written permission from a parent or guardian to receive any instruction that goes beyond that 3316.60 so if you want anything beyond the abstinence-oriented venereal education process you have to opt in so so it was opt-out for safety it was opt-out for venereal disease education this one for everything which is basically what we do is an opt-in so it's a different type of notification without that we cannot provide instruction to a child unless they have opted in and then obviously um this is just another clause that states that um if requested we can provide materials associated with this extra instruction that we're providing that goes above
020and beyond ohio revised code if a parent were to request that okay so this is the the clause remember i said the state doesn't have any actual standards they just have laws that we have to follow so this is part of the law that says that they will not adopt a separate model education program for health education so they're saying this is what we said and you're stuck with it um and then this is something new letter e that's starting this school year so they have always said you have to teach these things but you didn't have to prove it this year we actually had to participate in an audit ours was already submitted september 1st so every school district actually had to submit this regarding your curriculum and they have very specific questions and
021you had to upload different things and then what's going to happen is they will randomly audit about 20 of the schools in ohio that submit those and there is one person who will actually go through those audits and will decide if you met the requirement or you did not meet the requirement and then they are required to post those findings in a prominent place on their website so and then this is a wonderful clause here that says that no matter what school district you're in your superintendent cannot get rid of 3316.60 which is the abstinence education so even if your district doesn't believe in that at all and doesn't want to teach that you're not allowed to get rid of it okay happy with this stuff it's a lot okay so to summarize kindergarten through
022sixth grade the focus is personal safety and assault prevention that's required but you can opt out 7-12 we add in dating violence and the characteristics of healthy relationships there is no opt-out for that it's kind of hit and miss how they set this up the venereal disease education you can opt out additional venereal disease education beyond ohio revised code you have to opt in and that would just be 7-12 and then starting next year the suicide awareness and prevention the safety training and violence prevention and social inclusion instruction is six through twelve and same thing you can opt out if you needed to okay so i'm gonna pass it over to ms murano because she is going to talk in more detail about what we currently have what we have done historically and where we
023are going and this is primarily focusing on a 7-12 i will tell you in k-6 they have the nutrition value curriculum and then they also have that safety curriculum that is covered through the pe classes k-6 as well as mr gudgel's classes k-6 right now or you can if you want to show it it basically goes through the same here right now yep so so k-6 you have to talk about the value of food including natural and organically produced foods this is actually interesting you also have to talk about the use of effects of food additives so that is taught through pe pa6 and then you also have to talk about the harmful effects of legal restrictions against drugs alcohol tobacco and that is also case six and that is taught through mr gudgel's skills
024for life curriculum and activities and he does get to every grade level every class when he teaches that and then um the personal safety and assault prevention which is also taught by mr gudgel through that same curriculum and then this is i talked about house bill 367 and 712 and k6 they also have a portion of that where they must talk about prescription opioid abuse prevention and emphasize the drug epidemic and specifically emphasize heroin methamphetamines other opioids that are widely available due to their settlement and there is a specific curriculum the whole curriculum that ohio would like you to use to get that information out for k-6 all right so back to what we have and where we're going yes okay so one of the things that has been happening in our health classes is
025that we've had some guest speakers come in and i actually used to be one of the guest speakers way back in 2014 and so that was when i first came through the doors of yellow springs high schools or yeah i was in the high school um and i've been long-time partners with the family violence prevention center they do very good work they come in and they talk about healthy relationships and red flags for warming signs for an abusive relationship they talk about decision making skills they talk about negotiating boundaries and they talk about they talk about concept so that's a that's a really good program it's a been happening a long time and celeste hurley has been our teacher for that for years um and then there's and then there's me uh i have been
026teaching the sex ed up until kate lohmeier was here and she actually came through our training program at planned parenthood and then she took off with sexuality education in the high school which is actually really really amazing those programs are totally comprehensive they've been development they're developmentally appropriate they're age-appropriate you start with anatomy and physiology then you talk about how those things work together you talk about characteristics of good friends and good relationship partners you talk about sexually transmitted and sexually transmitted infections we don't call them venereal disease you talk about that kind of information and prevention you talk about pregnancy concerns and prevention they actually develop skills to use um in an actual situation and teach kids how to use condoms we talk about birth control options um and we do talk about abstinence
027because that is a very good birth control method while you're using it so um you know we've talked about all of those things and one of the things that kate really focused on which is amazing um were healthy relationships and dating abuse prevention so the kids actually got um double education on healthy relationships and decision making and negotiations um and boundary setting and things like that as it raised my head um so i've been helping with that since kate's been gone um and uh we are really lucky this year because genevieve ransington was one of my colleagues at planned parenthood and she's our school nurse now so she left planned parenthood she's in labor and delivery as a nurse and now she's a school nurse with us so we're sort of glad to have the
028dream team back together but we have extensive training in not just delivering sexuality education to k-12 students but also parents and community members and professionals in the community so training other people to do the work because we can't do it all by ourselves um the curriculum that we've been using here in yellow springs is based on something called making proud choices which was one of the uh evidence-based curriculums that were was um identified by the state of ohio the ohio department of health actually that uh to go in and use that curriculum with kids who were in juvenile detention kids who were in foster care and then other students too so this is a researched evidence-based thing when it's implemented with fidelity it's been shown to reduce the age of onset of intercourse and increase
029the amount of um sti and pregnancy prevention methods when and of course is initiated so those are the outcomes that we want we want kids to wait a little longer and we want them to be careful when they do it right so um that's what we've been using and we hope to continue to to use something along that framework and that's where advocates for youth comes in and we can use them as a guide pose to say here's what our values are here is where we're going to go with all of these different standards what's next yeah one question yeah especially with janine's experience and i do because there's the prevention end of things but then there's absolutely the experience of having children you all get into that how do you how do you go
030into that it sounds like it'd be it's wonderful to have somebody who has direct experience i think she'll be able to add a whole lot to that um to our curriculum based on her experience in that what we usually would talk about mostly would be just you know pregnancy and gestation and um and then the actual birth like how does how does it come out you know like are we gonna have a vaginal delivery are we gonna have a c-section you know what do those look like for um for people who are having babies and and we didn't go a whole lot farther than that actually so that whole financial responsibility piece will you know help us sort of bridge that gap um so what we're looking at now well let me back up for
031a second i want to tell you just a few things so um if you if you're familiar with the youth risk behavior surveillance survey it is a national survey that's done i believe every two years if that's if that's how they're still doing it and so they take national statistics on things that students are doing that are considered risky behaviors so there's um then i do i wear a helmet when i ride my bike do i wear a seat belt when i drive my car um do i get enough exercise every day do i eat nutritious food and then there's also part of it about sexual activity and um because each state does it too so we have some state data that we can compare to national data so at the latest published yrbs it
032was 2019 and 26.5 of high school students in ohio were currently sexually active and that compares 27.4 in the united states so so we're kind of on par you know with what kids are doing the average age of onset of intercourse is actually 17 years old and a lot of people don't realize that um because we hear so much about young people you know engaging in sexual behaviors and i mean we see it as the seventh graders come up too so uh one of the things that we want to do with the curriculum is make sure that we're being really engaged and developmentally appropriate um and experience appropriate right we're not going to stick our head in the sand um and let's see during last sexual intercourse for the 26 who were having um were
033having sexual intercourse 55.3 did not use the condom 68.1 did not use birth control pills 55.2 or percent did not use um an iud or an implant or anything like that and so these things are putting our students at risk and when we don't tell them what's available out there for them um it can have a really substantial impact on their life and their life outcomes and their educational outcomes so what we want to do is give these kids all of the skills and knowledge that they need to make their own decisions based on their values and their family values and we want them to have all the tools and the toolbox you know we don't want to not try to hide anything from kids um and then i just have one more statistic that
034that kind of goes back to the ohio revised code around sexual assaults 16.7 of kids having sex in ohio drink alcohol or use drugs before the last time that they had sex and if you are under the influence of drugs or alcohol you cannot legally consent so that's another thing that young people need to be really aware of so we do a lot of training around like hey is has your partner been drinking are they coming on to you you know they're drunk you should say no right so we're we're giving them like all kinds of tools and we practice with the words right like sometimes they want to say no but they don't know what to say so we give them actual language and practice doing those things so i just thought those statistics
035were kind of cool um so the sexual ethics for caring society uh has been studied at harvard graduate school and it is very extensive in that it talks a lot about the philosophical things that we should be talking about around sexuality education and relationships and things like that um it looks good from the front right but i haven't been able to read it i don't know if there's a slant i you know like i want to read it before we talk about it and make an actual recommendation um but i just want to tell you a few of the topics that are on there it's a 16 well it was 16 and now it's 17 lessons it goes through democracy and moral questioning friendship lust and casual sex what is love um normality and stereotypes
036gender identity non-conformance non-conformity and inclusion consent in coercion part one um which is all about consent and what it means to get like active consent i know that there were some questions about the sexual offense prevention policy um that they have at antioch and uh that's all about affirmative and active consent and so um you know we do talk about that too um consent and coercion part two what are the limitations of it consent and coercion rape culture we're talking about that which i think is hugely important we're talking about media and objectification sexting bodies and rights pornography religion and sex childhood sexuality and shame especially around childhood sexual assault victims pleasure and human rights is the 16th one and they've added in the newest iteration of this uh lesson on the metoo movement and
037so talking about um not hiding um sexual trauma and things like that um these are great i think it's really wonderful but what's missing from this is the nuts and bolts of what sex education really is so there's no anatomy in this there's no um pregnancy or infection prevention there's no violence prevention and decision making so if this is something that we decide that we want to go with we're going to bolster it up so that it meets our um our values around what sex education really is and gives the kids the whole plate of food so um you know but i want to read it all first it looks good on the outside one of the things i think that's really critically important is to make sure parents are on the same page and
038joy was talking a little bit earlier about how the law requires us to have the information there for parents we gotta have a parent night the parents have to come in they have to look at the lessons i even like to do a few lessons with parents while they're there so that they can get a feel for what the uh what the instruction is like and then yes we would certainly have all of those things there and then it gives parents an opportunity to ask questions from the people who are going to be teaching it so that it's not a big scary oh my gosh it's sex ed sort of thing that they can they can get all of their questions answered so um and then the other thing is that uh the other component
039is that i'd like to build a resource bank for parents to get a hold of on our website um how to talk with your kids how is the talk stock the talk you know and giving them the language too because they want to talk to their kids about it his parents are kids first and most important sex educators and so we want to equip them to get their kids off to a really good start so all of those things combined i think will um will um just really give us a nice holistic picture and uh program for comprehensive sex ed um at least in 7-12 and and one of the things that i'm hoping when i read that is that um i can modify it with fidelity to grades k through six because we certainly
040wouldn't give them the same information but they've got to have a foundation so that when they get into seventh grade they already know what's it what's it like to have a good friend and what does it feel like if somebody lies to you and how do you you know deal with somebody that you're upset with instead of not speak up for yourself you know so we're talking about being assertive we're talking about um standing up for our rights and things like that so what i what i really want is a nice big robust k-12 sex-ed program and we'll talk about sexually transmitted infections um so do you include um if maybe in the research bank or maybe that's something you discuss on um parent's site um i think one of the big questions is there's
041prevention and then there's also recovered from trauma what sort of resources do we have available to us so we would absolutely um provide information on how to have trauma-informed discussions with people about sexuality and um we will reach out and lean on our community partners who are experts in that kind of thing so the the idea is that like i have like i have a mental health resources guide i want a sexual health resources guide so that you know parents of students who are um lgbtq plus know what glsen is and know what p flag is and know where to go and they know where um what the domestic violence shelter and education websites and locations and things are yeah um i want to ask i you know i was a school board member who
042didn't sell review and student handbook and as i recall there was nothing there to tell a student what to do when something inappropriate happens to them um and then you know i also would want to know you know what is the school administration's steps if a student reports something so um so i is there something in the handbook there is so does it give you that so it covers all topics because you got to remember we're not just talking about social media we're talking about drugs alcohol we're talking about um physical assaults we're talking about all them yes so that is encompassed in two areas in our handbook so so first of all we have um there's language in our actual student code of conduct that covers things of a sexual nature like unwanted contact
043things like that although most of that would be referred to police as mandated reporters so we would pass most of that off anyways and then they would come back to us and then we would move from there but the two places where it's covered is covered in our stay safe speak up alert which is available on clevver we go over it in all of our advisories we show students where it's at there's an app we cover it in our assemblies as well and then now we also have our bias form that lets students report similar types of things but with a bias lens basically so so there's really two places where they can kind of do that and i would say based on our data at the high school i mean i i can tell
044you that our students know how to report and they are doing so very readily we get reports of things that happen over the summer all the time that have nothing to do with us that are not even our jurisdiction yet we provide the education necessary and make the referrals necessary and things like that so it happens all the time you get stuff all the time from students like i said it doesn't it's not even stuff that happens at school or has anything to do with school but our students feel comfortable coming to us that's that's pretty clear so with stem safe speak up and i think it might be on the website it is on the website as well so depending upon the nature of what's reported um you know the the principals both at
045the middle school high school and here they see this all the time they they know when something pops in and i get it i get everyone it says the stay safe speaker speak up alert has been issued and then it will tell me what the category is is it violence is it discrimination if there is something really serious life-threatening it will also um i believe it's a text we'll send something that says hey you got this alert and if it's really serious i believe they also reach out to local law enforcement so there are multiple levels of this but students use it quite quite frequently which is what we want right so so if they do not if we do not respond if it's something that's coded as violence or suicide or something like that
046that's more serious if we do not respond within five minutes which i i mean i can tell you we get well before then there's actually like a processing section so if we do not open that up read it make comments in the processing section about what we are doing they will actually call us at school if they cannot get a hold of us they will go down the line every everybody every administrator in our district gets it dr holden gets it our secretaries get it so there's a lot of different ways so we'll get them even at night and we'll be alerted that we have them so i would say this year i think we're up to seven or eight at the middle school high school reports and they arrange everything from we've had kids
047report like i sit next to someone i don't like and i don't know how to have a conversation to explain to the teacher that i don't want to sit by them anymore so we handle that all the way up to things that are much more serious i think my friends might hurt himself yeah we've had those or even from a student you know going to hurt him or herself so you know it runs the gamut but it's a pretty good system and in terms of your question about mandated reporting we follow the mandated reporting law um we contact children's services and law enforcement as soon as possible and um and we let them be the investigator like we're not the investigators so we take the knowledge that we are you know whatever the disclosure has
048been to us and um we care for the student right then and there and then we call the appropriate authorities and just and just so folks know how a man-named reporter works whoever is first contact of the incident that is the mandated report so sometimes particularly when i was a principal teachers would come to me and say i heard this will you call no i will sit with you while you call but i by law cannot call because you are first kind of that first line of defense so trying to tell but this is training that all of our staff get through public school works on on the difference well i mean this is good i mean because there's very common one thing that came out early in the v2 movement people talked about how
049people were getting things because their story had changed and it was the fact that the reporting got gargled in the beginning so these apps are self-reporting important in helping prevent that um you know i kind of maybe you have some questions on this too is that uh how how do you feel so it sounds like the students are using it for a range of activities right um how do you feel we're doing in getting reports i mean is there you know is do you feel like it's about iceberg you feel like i i i think from my perspective in the uh school counseling office that kids feel very comfortable coming to tell us things and so um if the kid doesn't tell me their self their friends will come and tell me i have good
050relationships with lots of parents and parents have called and said i have a concern about this kid and um i i think we've trained our kids enough especially around sexual violence stuff that they know what's okay and what isn't and what to do if something isn't okay anymore our students will even report hearsay so they're sitting in a class and they didn't even hear the whole conversation but they heard somebody say something that sounded concerning from two tables away they will report that and they have the ability to report that anonymously usually because we're so small and we know our students really well we can usually figure out kind of putting all our heads together either where it came from or what it's about um and usually we can go from there but they're very
051active and i mean i've been in other districts and um the students here report now they report to counselors a lot more counselors are always going to get a different set of things than principals but from the principal perspective i get way more reports than i would ever get anywhere else so our students are very very comfortable that's good i mean because it can help especially you know testing with people there's ages where kids has boundaries right and so but if you can address that you're testing early that's usually that's usually good so i like that the system has a range of um you know so and we'll so the reason i got involved with this is because of the assaults that have happened over the last 10 years with you know two different assailants
052with multiple female victims ranging from seventh grade through high school um and with both of those groups nothing was reported for long periods of time and i'm a family friend with one of the females that was assaulted back in the in the older group of assaults and i spoke to her at length they brought me in because i used to be a juvenile probation officer so they brought me because they didn't know what to do and there was definitely a culture that did not make them feel safe reporting because everybody knew each other and they didn't have a good idea of what consent was and what it's not and while it sounds like you're doing a lot with the curriculum i really feel it would be important to do basic consent and something like the
053antioch sopp from age kindergarten on as a parent of someone in first grade there were children kissing each other in kindergarten on the playground last year um there's been students in first grade who tried to touch each other inappropriately to get the other ones in trouble this year even there there's not a good boundary set and i don't know if parents are not communicating or just what all it takes is one parent not communicating these boundaries and it affects all these children and having a firm you know this is part of school policy this is the language we use as part of this policy and building that up over each year to get to where you're in sixth or seventh grade and actually getting into you know this is an assault and no you cannot
054do this but they have a very firm idea of where their body is what's allowed to be you know they're not allowed to go out and touch their hair or touch their face without permission let alone any of the other things because they have this firm idea that this is their cell and you know without that common language they're not going to be able to implement that and later on you know i have that negative skew you know i had i had kids on my caseload who were enforcement prostitution at age you know fourth grade so unfortunately these things happen and you hate to hear about it but it's there and we should be teaching this kind of stuff absolutely to that worst case scenario and building up and not just leaving it up to
055what parents are telling them about consent and about people's bodies because those kids are going to victimize other victims themselves so i want to respond to that and i i'm not going to be around the militia i know things have happened but i can't speak to anything and i can i can't and i won't speak to anything that's happened before me because honestly it's just inappropriate for me to do so we've worked really hard to try to create an environment for students to feel safe about speaking are we there yet i don't know i think i think that's always a journey but it's one we're going to be very transparent about it so that's our goal i think with stay safe speak up you know joy was talking about the whole breadth of things that
056students can report same thing with our bias discrimination can i say students are reporting every sexual incident that occurs there's no way i would have to know that but i think with the more than curriculum that we've done in the past and will continue to strengthen i think that is the first step there clearly is a part of k-6 but i want to be very clear antioch izzy is an institution for adults i have children here children cannot give consent so there are things sarah i think you're right about bodies and that is part of what's addressed at k-6 can it be strengthened sure i mean i think all of this can be strengthened but i just want to make it perfectly clear in public that i cannot say yeah we're going to teach students
057who are under 10 and then under 13 and whatever they're going have you interviewed any of the students to get a guide like a baseline on from the kindergarten first graders about what they do understand from the curriculum that you've been teaching them about their personal space and have i you know that's a question i can easily ask mrs winston but i am you know i think john gujjal does a good job when he talks to kids about the variety of things that we've asked him to talk to kids about um and then again and some of this is addressed in pe one i know mr gradual does a great job i didn't listen to him during code which is fantastic um my concern is that younger kids how much they're actually gaining and understanding
058from that with the terminology that they're using because he can give them great information but if it's not something that they can implement or understand because it's given to them once and not on a repetitive basis and part of the policies of the schools and the rules that they're not implementing that into their general knowledge again i'm happy to talk to and i would say based on what we see coming up to seventh grade the conversations that students have with me about somebody tapped my shoulder and i didn't like that that lets me know that they're getting that information somewhere they i didn't teach that to them day one they came with it which which is around that whole piece so when we're talking about something as simple as touching a shoulder and they're saying
059i didn't like that or i told them to stop and they didn't that lets me know that at some point something's sticky and i guarantee some of the kids are getting it my concern is the kids are really at risk for the ones well but i can't yeah you can't do it again yeah and based on these laws too about the the more than parents i mean we can offer it and parents can still opt to their kid out of it so one of the things that's so beautiful about yellow springs is that there's um this you know sort of collective sense of values um that that most people have and um you know hopefully that will translate through to parents not opting their kids out of this really important education but i was going
060to say children learn a lot from the conversations that happen in the classroom whether they're being taught or not by their parents whatever it is if this is you know a standard and the teachers are saying they told you not to touch them so please listen students saying that to each other so i think you know the students will learn just uh a lot of them will learn you know these values just being a part of those conversations in those little classrooms we have three questions and two of them are related to that um what is the process like to opt out and more singaporeans opt-in so so it's basically two different letters so the first one that goes home um addresses so the state says we have to put on there basically that 33
06116 60 this is what we're going to cover this is you know yes my kid can do this no they can't so so basically we send it home on a form if they choose to opt out they check the box they send it back that student opts out and then we have to find an alternative setting for them during that piece of instruction the second form that goes out um and this is the one that the state has a little more requirements around um is they basically say that for anything that is beyond what's in 3316 that you want to add that you must list the curriculum the vendor if you're having a speaker who the speaker is what their purpose is the name of the speaker like it has to be extremely detailed and
062so that form that goes home is very similar except that one is an opt-in instead of an opt-out so we just kind of change the the box to approve the additional curriculum yes so yeah they they have they have to opt in so if we have a student so and what we'll do is um most i would say well we didn't even have anyone last year that opted out but um our parents are pretty good about responding to things that we send home but if not we'll actually call them and say hey this is what we're doing it's starting next week we didn't hear back from you did you want your child to participate in this education and then we'll get knocked in that way and they'll send us an email which is written permission
063that they can opt in that's fantastic i i really am really glad to hear that um the next question i had was really about the k-6 and i know that you're not overseeing this but i know that we've talked about how this happened in skills for lives but skills for life in k through 6 is being phased out as a standalone special so yeah we talked extensively to ms winston and i gave her the night off because she had so many mr getting ready for into the wine but she said mr gudgel even though skills for life is not taking place in segway gets to every classroom and every great level okay okay great okay and then my last question was about a question that was in laurie and sarah's uh email that was about
064the anonymous suggestion boxes in the restroom that was discussed in 2018 um i'm not sure what that box was supposed to gather but do we have a system that builds that purpose whatever but what is it so so the um so in my understanding that the first rendition of that came out in a physical box and that they would put the same types of things that we do electronically but they would put it in a physical box so this actually makes it easier in my opinion so so the stay safe speak up has replaced that as well as the bias accident report and talking to mr hatter because we kind of analyzed historically where it was to where it's going our number of reports have probably tripled as compared to the the physical box um
065so whether it's a more student friendly yeah yeah it's more accessible they can do it anywhere people don't even know they're doing it yes um so the stay safe program did that come in then in like so the first year of stay safe speak up was last year oh okay um so so ohio made a new law um and they actually required so you are required to do one of two things either you have to promote their safe tip line there's actually a state safe tip line if you're not going to promote that then you must provide your own yellow springs chose to provide their own which is the stay safe speak up which is actually much more versatile than the state line which is focused it's really not useful it's a phone call it's
066yeah it's not this is a much better it sounds like a really good broker yeah i just want to say first off i appreciate how difficult it must be to kind of walk this tightrope between the the really terrible ohio standards i can say that you can't but i get that they're just like it's for lack of standards really just whatever it is that they're requiring me to do and then what the community wants that's a really hard nice little question i totally appreciate that yeah and i think i one of the things that when i work with this at the college level is always a concern is that with mandated reporting they're it's so hard for a kid an adult even to work out you know what they want to do and as soon
067as they open their mouth in my office it becomes this whole legal judicial alignment it sounds like i'm sure it is much worse when you're dealing with minors because is there such a thing because we have a couple of non-mandated reporters so i can always say to a student okay if you say anything more i have to no report but there's no such thing as that and shannon actually covers and so does miss gunner another counselor can you talk about the three things that yeah so um it's posted in our offices and whenever i feel like a student is going to make some some sort of disclosure i want to have them to have informed consent about what they're doing because you're right after it comes out of their mouth it's totally out of their
068hands yeah and so um if a student tells us that they are going to hurt themselves or hurt someone else that they are involved in some kind of illegal sexual relationship or someone is hurting abusing or neglecting them those are the ones so they're they're aware of that and honestly if they're about to say something and i remind them of that they just tell me anyway because they wanted help they knew where to go to get it and they were ready for something to happen does that mean that they don't always cuss me or get really mad when i have to tell no but they knew it up front because and i tell them like i i want us to establish some trust so here's what i'm always gonna do no matter what you do
069and i think it's important to know that even if we get into a situation where we are making a mandated report you know in some schools they make the mandated report and that's that's it right that's not how we operate um we put in so many measures to make that student feel safe and comfortable and do as much as we can we work with donna um we call you all the time about title nine and everything else and things that we can put in place so so we are not a one-stop shop i would say like some school districts are um we really put our time and effort into supporting that student as a whole as much as we can we have to have parental consent of course for most of it which is sometimes
070hard but but we do try to offer those things well if we feel like the situation is going to get really escalated at home too like we'll call this randolph and ask for a well check at home because sometimes kids are really scared that their parents are going to get mad because now children's services might get involved so we want to make sure they're safe when they go home too so we we follow up in all kinds of ways uh the an area we haven't really talked about very much is drugs and alcohol and um i've got a couple resources here i looked into this back when life one of my children was in high school um you know my understanding is primarily your teaching estimates and um which is understandable in a certain sort
071of way but um there's some good resources for your talk on parental resources and potentially resources free for you guys uh through this organization called um called well this is called safetypers.org and they have a curriculum and i can give you these two booklets one's called a reality-based approach teams and drugs and and their model is their motto is safety first and then beyond zero tolerance a reality-based approach to drug education and school discipline and these these are i got actually a little pile of these because i was going to try to do something with these a few years ago and it never happened so if you want anymore but i'm happy to give you these to look at then if you go to their um if you go to their safety church.org there is
072a curriculum i i haven't i didn't i just found that today i thought it just occurred to you oh this is something that might be involved into this discussion and so i looked into a little bit so anyway i'll leave these with with you if you want more or you can you know i do have a few more comments thanks yeah and i just also wanted to ask i mean i think um we're touching upon it but i think one of the questions that is also in many of our minds right now in terms of health education and inclusion is making sure that um our lgbtq plus students feel safe and this has become a national issue has gotten a lot of attention but um i i just just sort of wanted to you know
073ask the educators in the room um you know how you all are you know feeling as you take the pulse of yellow springs schools and the kids and how um how that is going if there are some kind of goal posts for approaches that also you feel that we could be you know maybe looking towards um similarly how you presented this so well and um i just wanted to appreciate you guys for being here and just see if you have any comments on that end well from from my perspective in developing the lesson plans and delivering the lesson plans we um rely um heavily on trauma-informed care we rely heavily on inclusive language and intersectionality and making sure that the language we use is relevant to everyone so we we just really specifically talk about
074everything do you think the culture is in this little high school that students are feeling comfortable no matter where how they identify or well i i mean i think we can always improve upon that but i'm playing with their peers and just i've never been in a place like yellow springs before in my life and throughout all the time that i was a guest speaker going around and teaching sexuality education yellow springs has the most supportive and inclusive and accepting sort of attitude and practice around um kids of all different kinds of gender identities and expressions and sexual orientations and you know just everything and one of the things when i'm touring people around like new students i just tell them there's some place here for everybody and that's my favorite thing about the spring
075schools we we are special and i'm at a soccer game last thursday and i was just watching kids and they had to attend middle school um i would not see those children at any other school districts and and i want to keep it that way and there are so many external pressures on this thing i think yellow springs you know there's none specifically on this but you know sometimes when you're different you you're but our goal is to support all of our students i i do think that as as a gay woman this concept of sexual education around gayness or any other identity is foreign to me probably because of my age but i think we are doing things differently and and that is so important to me and i hope parents in the community
076see that because our children need it because sometimes in the world outside school they don't always get that support so i think this is this is important and this approach is important and i can say our open enrollment students almost always report that it's more welcoming here or people are free to express themselves here or it just has a they say it has a different feel they say it's a very different environment um and sometimes it takes them a little bit to adapt honestly and become more comfortable because there's life right because that's not their previous experience so so that is something that's very unique to our community so the uh so it sounds like a lot of changes have happened over the last year in particular which was fantastic what is set in place
077in your policy before to make sure that it's revisited on a regular basis and it doesn't sit on the shelf can you describe what like every three years it goes back to revamp to make sure it's the best what's that about the curriculum the curriculum i mean there's no there's nothing in writing um is a curriculum piece there is a curriculum review piece in writing i think that might be five years just kind of a general piece um but i think this area a lot has changed i came in 2019 and a lot has changed since so a lot has changed four years and now starting starting four years so i think in this area in particular we're going to be pushed by the outside forces around us right hopefully in only good ways i
078i will say while there's nothing tj's right there's nothing officially written like a specific policy we review curriculum every year um it's something that we talk about in the summer and honestly our students will not let us remain stagnant i can tell you that 100 they will not let us stay segmented is there a way i know you can't do such curriculum but is there a way for the school board themselves to have like a guideline or a goal with that curriculum to make sure that it's inclusive at all points if administration changes or things change to kind of protect this ideal for the community that's a formal policy that that's part of it but a policy can always be changed too i mean another board could change it as well right but it is
079your concern that it could change with different instructors for example yeah it could change with different instructors or different situations coming in to say you know these are the ideals that the board said forward or even maybe protect those changes externally are so good perfect transparency here you know we don't have a lot of hard curriculum here that's been a hallmark of the illustrators it's very good in some ways and it's awful in other words one of the ways it's it makes teachers work 20 times harder than they have to but we now have a math group we have an ela crib we have a science curriculum so when you say to make sure instructors don't vary from the curriculum there is a policy that says if you are an instructor who knows from schools
080you absolutely teach the curriculum i mean that is policy so um with health and you know health education and sex education we consider our curriculum what we're required to do by law which is not a discussion and then what we provide additionally um as you can see there are challenges to us for that because generally you can say with curriculum all students get this curriculum the state has allowed parents to opt out but i think historically they have not come through so um there is some protection in terms of we can't have a new health teacher come in and say well i'm going to teach this well this is our health care team this is what we're teaching so the majority of things the state mandates what we teach the health one is the one
081that's open that's really driven by our stakeholders i would say which is which is very unique so there's many districts that just do whatever that says and they're done and that is a-okay whether their stakeholders like it or not here we actually listen to input and our communities simply would not stand for that to tj's point i think what he's trying to say is you can put a policy in place but once you have new board members they can easily replace that policy as soon as they wanted to so you're you're never going to get something that's never perfect protection right right right there's a policy in place there's a public process to change the policy correct and so people in the public are made more aware when that changes where if it's just something
082that is by informal agreement or by teacher those things can vary just without any public knowledge and it you know it requires an incident before it becomes forward you do some of this stuff um uh there's a wellness committee um on the school board and so this is perhaps something well i i mean i also think it's an opportunity um you may or may not be aware and we're still in sort of the beginning stages of talking about strategic planning um but it's really an opportunity right with a strategic plan you are typically looking at five to ten years out right it's an opportunity i think for the district not just the board the whole district right parents teachers everyone to kind of give their input around what the values are of the school what
083is our mission what are our goals in these ways and so i just think that that could be also a place where some of this could be expressed in our values yeah there's a lot of very interesting conversations to have that maybe it's not the fourth school need on this i there's there's so much changing at the moment it would be really great to have you know other centers in the community to join the conversation because this is not just affecting um our children it's affecting you know as there's changes in the country that are checking affecting all families and anyone capable i guess i have a question because part of the reason that you guys asked for this are you asking questions that you asked was because of the law that changed around abortion
084and i'm wondering now to you how if that law change affects how you support a student who maybe becomes pregnant it complicates it in like times a thousand yeah because um uh because there are three options for someone who becomes pregnant they can continue a pregnancy and parent they can continue a pregnancy and adopt or they can terminate their pregnancy through abortion and those three options right now um you know are kind of at two-thirds of it so it would i mean it would it really complicates things and and just like for doctors you know like if they start to you know tell somebody else where to go like there are casuals and you know there are all kinds of things that you know are going to prevent people like us probably from sharing oh
085hey you can go to there or you know or how to get an initial bypass if you need abortion services um i don't even know this is something honestly we need to consult our legal counsel because all that you should see on most of these new balls that are coming through whether it's federal or um you know the anti-crt the anti-lgbtq class they have real teeth in terms of personal liability and at some point i have to say you know you've got to think about your profession and your family and and which is terrible it's terrible to be put into that position so i think the answer dude is we don't really know i have a question about the training one last question about the training so you talked about healthy relationships are you talking
086about bullying is the anti-bullying prevention included in that training as well we do but we don't tie that kind of bullying directly to sexuality education but we definitely talk about red flags um with partners and and we do tie that to guess what you get to say what happens to you whether or not it's your friend or your romantic partner or you know like if you don't want to kiss aunt gretel when she comes over you don't have to hit the end riddle you know and so like we talk about choices that that kids get to make and um we talk about coercion and we talk about manipulation and things like that and that they can really generalize to other parts of their other parts of their lives and um you know their interpersonal relationships
087you start that conversation well i mean i think i if uh on the more you know my personal and professional opinion is that we start with the with kay you know we you know you don't have to hold hands you don't have to hug that person you know because when we make somebody feel guilty if they don't hug their aunt gretel you know like that sends a message about saying no to somebody and how you feel about it instead of feeling guilty about it and being made to feel shamed because you didn't want to do it you know we should support people and you know say yes or no i don't want to hug that person and those messages come from the very beginning you know if that is if that is the case through
088i know we're not it's focused on that so because they get missed messages and if it's not school policy they're going to give mixed messages from your teachers or something happens and it's going to get messy i will say starting next year is the law so it will be in there and i i think when when we do our due diligence and looking at these curricula and sort of um aligning them to the advocates for youth standards and the ohio state law around what we're doing that i think that we can come to a pretty concrete plan you know there are all kinds of ways to convey that kind of consent idea to any words that liberals understand so um our adolescence in the community are experiencing what i've seen like the world health association
089taught me about the jump in depression and anxiety rates um you know is seeing this jump is there some proactive work that we're doing with the students to so one of the things that we did last year is that we partnered with the uh green county esc to provide um what's called the expert it's um oh boy survey brief intervention and referrals or treatment there it is um and so every one of our students in the k through 12 building took um like a 10 minutes or except for the kids who opted out and there were three families that opted their students out of that but they asked them questions about um mental health they asked them questions about anxiety and depression and coping skills and drug and alcohol use and and things like that
090and so um those students went all the way through that and then when um if they were okay or didn't scream for needing a brief intervention or a referral for treatment that was kind of it and then we you know do everything for those students that we do for everyone else if they needed a screen for potentially benefiting from a brief intervention and those same professionals came back and did four sessions with our students about um anxiety and coping skills that aren't so negative and um and reaching out for help and recognizing signs in other people if they screened for possibly um um benefiting from a referral for treatment we had a whole list of things that came from the esc's where we could refer them out one of one of the things that i
091wonder about that is that language about anxiety and depression is it being linked to violence um because i mean it's such a pervasive problem in the extreme places um we might see violence but you know but for i think for most students they wouldn't reach that stage but they're still benefit from integration so we do have some mental health therapists that students see i'm going to tell you our services are limited and that's not a unique problem to us because there are not enough mental health services period i will say i believe in the spring you know we just started as a district i work with the san diego promise so last week we had start with hello which is what it is it was a little campaign you know first first effort but in
092the spring the high school was going to begin hope squad which is really a suicide awareness um hope squad kind of like a peer support and intervention club and so students learn to look for signs of suicide or signs of depression and they these same student leaders learn like how to how to approach the topic because um what we know is that if somebody is suicidal asking them if they're suicidal doesn't make them go off and do it so we'll train them to recognize the signs know how to talk to their peers and know how to steer their peers to an adult who that they trust who can support them and i will say miss gunn actually just disaggregated our data and our seventh graders showed from the start with below week our seventh graders
093showed significant gains in terms of reaching out to people who were seen to be isolated or showing some of those types of science they did some lessons based around that something else that we've done at the secondary level is we've sent out a parent survey um getting feedback regarding what are what are they seeing what do they think students need and we're also doing that with our students as well and we will be working on providing targeted small group interventions it's great as immediate um it it's just like dr holden said it's never enough but we try to put in as much as we can i i know as a 13 year old i benefited from therapy when i was dealing with anxiety i mean i think most people here know that i am not
094a sick person and uh and i was asking for help early in my teens right and i got it and i went through group therapy it was extremely helpful to me and being accessible in my life let alone my my grade school career well and and we can provide sort of like some psycho educational stuff but we also have to stay within the scope of our practice so um but what i can say is that um at the middle in high school while we don't have enough mental health support we do have more time this year than we've ever had before we have two sole days with our school-based mental health therapist and um she always came to me yeah sorry um and she came to me last week and said i need to do
095a group with some of my kids is there any other students that you can identify that might benefit from that um because i can see them in a little small group session too so um we are identifying those needs and trying to try to pull those kids in have you started to keep data children would like to be able to refer to counseling and share the data with catering health network or miami valley about implementing a child counselor in the village i keep the data on um every share referral but i don't care it would just be a general need to communicate there is a need in the community because a lot of times that's all they need to get someone in once a week yeah i mean i think we're happy to share kind
096of general data it's been my experience that while they might be agreeable it's just no we have parents that contact us specifically for referrals to see if we have west side montgomery county you know if they're willing to drive but everything has been like a one that two months wait unless you are pretty lending crisis together yeah it might be it might be interesting you can maybe provide you know a talk about just what's available in the area um well we definitely have a list of all of the current providers that are at least here in clarke county um and i don't see any reason why we couldn't we couldn't publish that because i hand it out to people all the time it might be interesting to like include a few things like certain specialties
097too you know so i know that ticks are something that's on the x there's different techniques that people use for anxiety versus depression so just helping inform people so many paths thank you thank you very much our next work session is in october yeah actually i believe it's the 24th we actually scheduled okay yes thank you everybody thank you