The nation's leading association of pediatricians, along with two parents, are declaring victory and ending a lawsuit against a Central Valley school district over providing students with adequate sex education.
The American Academy of Pediatrics, the Gay-Straight Alliance Network and two local parents had sued the Clovis schools in August 2012. They charged that "the district’s abstinence-only-until-marriage curriculum violated California law and put teens’ health at risk by teaching students misinformation and denying them instruction on critical topics," reported the American Civil Liberties Union, which represented the plaintiffs.
Now the plaintiffs are satisfied with what the ACLU called "dramatic improvements" in Clovis, a city of about 100,000 near Fresno. Changes to the sex education curriculum include removing "wrong and biased" materials, adding information about contraception and training teachers, the ACLU stated.
So they dropped the lawsuit -- upon which the school district also claimed victory. Spokesperson Kelly Avants said in a written statement: "The Plaintiffs’ voluntary dismissal of all claims validates Clovis Unified’s sex education curriculum and the routine process through which we review and update curriculum in our schools on an on-going basis."
California does not require schools to offer sex education. But if schools do, the state education code requires the course content to include medically accurate information about sexually transmitted diseases and contraception.