New York City Council is Demanding That the DOE Act on Comprehensive Sexual Health Education
By Morgan Little, Senior Director Of Youth Programs, Planned Parenthood of New York City
What’s worse: Abstinence-only, medically inaccurate sex education or no sex education at all? Though New York does not rank quite as poorly on the national scale of sex education, it is definitely nowhere near the top of the list. Other city and state governments nationwide have taken the appropriate steps to begin incorporating comprehensive sexual health into their health and wellness programs, yet New York City is still holding back.
New York City has long prided itself on being a progressive leader of transformative change for other state and local governments to model. Despite this perception, New York City’s Department of Education is failing New York City students when it comes to sexual health education. This is unacceptable. The benefits of implementing a K-12 comprehensive sexual education program are endless, yet the proposal of such a program is still met with fervent pushback.
In 2017, City Council passed legislation that established a Sexual Health Education Task Force to examine the effects of an inefficient sexual education program and make recommendations to address these large holes in students’ overall education. Their findings make one thing clear: failing to provide comprehensive sexual education to our youth have many severe, long-term consequences. The task force found that there were expansive gaps in the program and even in the small percentage of schools in which sexual education was present, it was being taught infrequently by faculty members who were not trained to be teaching sexual health.
The New York City Council is no longer accepting this. Recently, the council approved a resolution that will call on the Department of Education to adopt all recommendations included in the Mayor’s Sexual Health Education Task Force’s proposal for comprehensive, medically accurate, and inclusive sexual health education for students of all grade levels.
One of the components of comprehensive sexual education that is met with the most pushback is mandating sexual health to be taught across all grade levels — starting in kindergarten. Comprehensive sex education for grades K-5 means identifying body parts, learning communication skills and bodily autonomy, and knowing how to talk to trusted adults if anything ever feels uncomfortable. Long term, this helps build healthy relationships, understand consent and bodily autonomy, and learn to value and respect people’s identities across gender, sexuality, race, and culture.
By lacking to invest in a comprehensive sexual health education program, we are putting New York City youth at risk of contracting STIs that are easily preventable. We are seeing young people in New York City face some of the highest rates of intimate partner violence nationwide. Because of a lack of visibility and affirmation in the current heteronormative sexual health curriculum, LGBTQIA+ students are facing bullying and depression at a higher rate than their cisgender, heterosexual peers. The task force also disclosed that over half of all new STIs nationwide are contracted by 15–24 year-olds.
Today’s youth have made it clear that no matter what the topic, they want to know the truth. They have also made it very clear that they have no problem questioning authority to attain those truths. Despite this vocal demand for transparency when it comes to sexual health, governments and school boards are still hesitant to accommodate these demands. We cannot afford to wait any longer. By denying youth access to information, the current message that the DOE is sending is that sexual health is not a factor in one’s overall health when nothing could be further from the truth.
We cannot continue to pretend that New York City is a progressive beacon when our sexual health program is no more informative than the curriculums being taught in more conservative parts of the country. Now is the time to throw our full support behind the city’s youth and demand more from the Department of Education.
Planned Parenthood of New York City stands with the New York City Council and other sexual health advocates, in calling on the Department of Education to implement all eleven of the Task Force’s recommendations.
