No condoms for grade schoolers, Mass. schools say

[Lone_Star_Dem]

Source: Associated Press

PROVINCETOWN, Mass. — The superintendent of a Massachusetts school district is apologizing to parents for what she calls a misunderstanding over a condom availability policy.

Superintendent Beth Singer said in the letter e-mailed Tuesday that the district will clarify that elementary school-age students won't be able to get a condom if they request one from the school nurse.

The Cape Cod Times reports that she wrote it became necessary to revise the wording after it was "so badly understood and misrepresented by the media."

Read more: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5j85_i...

[Doctor_J]

1. That's right. They can carry guns but not condoms.

Get your rights straight!

[cali]

27. codswallop

making shit up is not a valid argument.

[Ter]

28. To be fair, condoms aren't in the Constitution

Just saying.

[michreject]

32. They can carry gun? I don't think so.

Get your rights straight!

[Schema Thing]

2. so long as they can get a morning-after pill, all will be fine.

[Jennicut]

3. They wanted to give condoms to even 1st graders. My daughter is six. Going into first grade.

What would she do with a condom? She wouldn't even understand. I could see 6th grade on.

[FSogol]

5. That's not true. They were making them available to 5th and 6 graders. n/t

[Jennicut]

10. 5th and 6th grade I can understand.

[SomeGuyInEagan]

11. The policy simply did not state a minimum age because they wanted it to be effective.

If they had written it with a minimum age of 13, sexually active 12-year-olds are left out (and that does happen). So they intentionally left it open at the bottom for those rare cases where a 10-, 11- or 12-year-old has options.

And, if you read the policy, they were not going to leave a bowl of condoms on a table for anyone to take as they please. To get one, the student needed to talk with a nurse first, who would have the opportunity to ask questions and hopefully have a discussion about it.

Seems very responsible and forward-thinking to me. However, the media can be neither when selling headlines.

[FSogol]

12. Agree. Add in the fact that children sometimes reach puberty early than

in our days and this was a policy that makes perfect sense. I'm sure the more progressive school nurses will have condoms around if needed/requested.

[eagertolearn]

16. Our high school school nurse can't even tell them about condoms

or how to get them. Even when the kids are obviously sexually active. We do have a nice supportive program for those who are pregnant and have a baby to keep the moms in school (sometimes an apartment, food and household supplies). But I'm not sure if they still get the support after they are done with school.

[Dark]

31. "Look mommy and daddy, they're giving out free balloons at school!"

n/t

[Bluzmann57]

4. Children that young don't need condoms

They are too young.

[Iggo]

8. Too young to practice safe sex?

[Evasporque]

14. Ten year old contracted STD...

Carried it for four years it till she nearly died from a septic infection.

Over 40% of African American youths have sex before age 12.

[SunnySong]

18. That stat seems to me to be a racist lie. nt

[Xithras]

21. Those numbers are incorrect, but the real numbers aren't very comforting either.

According to the latest teen sexual health numbers from the Kaiser Family Foundation (2006), 68% of African Americans have had sex before leaving high school. That same number for white students is 43%. More disturbing, 27% of African American boys, 11% of latino boys, and 5% of white boys had their first sexual encounter before the age of 13. Read that last number again...African American boys are five times as likely to have sex before 13 as white boys are, and more than twice as likely as latinos. That is a very real problem.

While the numbers for girls aren't available, it's unlikely that those boys are all having sex with their older babysitters or with each other (the reported rate of homosexual sex in the same age group is about 3%). Factoring in multiple partners, it's probable that up to 20% of African American girls have sex before their 13th birthday. That same number, for caucasian girls, is less than 5%

[callous taoboy]

6. But kiddies by all means go hack, bludgeon, and strafe away on your play stations.

In the meantime we can't have middle schoolers taking proper safe sex precautions.

[callous taoboy]

7. I'll add that there is a lot of sexual activity at our local middle school,

and an epidemic of teen pregnancies and we are a town with a population of 10,000.

[eagertolearn]

13. Sounds like our town of 13,000. 20 pregnancies the year before last

and they are not even aloud to talk about protection in our school (I think the policy is they are supposed to mention condoms twice in high school. The morning after pill is big around here and many are using that as birth control which obviously doesn't protect them from STD's. My duaghter was in her first year of college last year and said to me once when i was visiting "do you know how many of my friends (in high school) I took to the store to get a pregnancy test after they told me they had sex with their boyfriend"? She said once she did that she told them that they needed to be protected or not have sex. Many have parents who thought they were safe because they were going to church. There is so much to this. We need a comprehensive program that works at this from all angles and starts with being in charge of your body and liking yourself in the grade school years. Research shows people will put off having sex when they are educated about all of this. I here some parents who don't want sex education in schools say "there will always be those kinds of kids who get pregnant....while they promote not having sex but have their church going daughter on birth control for pimples! This whole issue frustrates me because the kids having these kids are not going to get much support after HS and they are not usually prepared to be good parents (many don't have the best examples).

[Deep13]

9. +1

[SunnySong]

19. Yeah because make believe is the same as real life.... nt

[callous taoboy]

22. You just don't get it. It's o.k. I run into this all the time these days.

[Blandocyte]

15. Many problems we have in life start as

a "misunderstanding over a condom availability policy."

[hayu_lol]

17. There was a thread here on DU...

about a week or two ago. Father was 10, Mom was 11-12. She had the baby. Not much else in the article, but the problem does exist in this age group.

This school was attempting to deal properly with the problem.

[SunnySong]

20. The problem was "Without notifying the parents" that is where many including myself

draw the line.


I would want to know if my nine-year old was requesting condoms.

[callous taoboy]

23. 9 year old is third grade. This was not aimed at third grade.

[SunnySong]

25. Fair enough but even eleven or twelve... if the kid is underage the parents should be informed

nt

[callous taoboy]

29. You seriously think that a sexually active middle school child

is going to go through a process to procure a rubber which will lead to parental notification? I received zero sex ed. as an adolescent, not at school or from my parents. It is sheer luck that I did not get someone pregnant in middle school or high school. This was also before the epidemic we now have of STDs. How backwards can this society be? And my parents either had absolutely no idea I was sexually active or they just didn't want to know. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

[SomeGuyInEagan]

30. + 1000

Very few kids - if any - are going to go to the school nurse to get a condom if they know their parents will get a call first.

That only leads to unprotected sex, leading to all sorts of unintended ... er, complications. And there is a lot more of that going on and at much earlier ages than most people are willing to admit and has been that way as long as human history. So let's grow up and deal with it in a productive (sorry, couldn't resist) manner rather than the idiocy that stopped this policy, which will surely lead to more pregnant teens, more STDs, etc.

[callous taoboy]

33. Let me tell you how it is here in small town Tx....

I am a third grade teacher at the elementary and am in the same social circle as the principal at the middle school. She was telling me about how much of her time has been taken up dealing with kids having sex in the bathrooms. I didn't tell her about the few times I had unprotected sex during lunch in the woods while I was in middle school, how by high school we were all screwing like rabbits. Now while I don't condone this sort of behavior, I am at the same time disturbed by the several former students I've run into over the last few years carrying a baby in their arms. Tragic. These kids aren't even in their sophomore year yet. Now getting pregnant is becoming sort of a badge of honor in some circles.

This is a only a tricky problem because of the maniacal puritanical posturing in our society. European societies instruct kids at an early age about sexuality, then their young are provided with contraception. Would you believe that the rate of teen pregnancies / spread of STD's in said societies pale in comparison to ours?

[Mimosa]

24. Heck yes! Where are the parents...

What kind of parents let kids at age 10 or 12 have sleepovers with the opposite sex? Or leave their kids alone for extended periods of time without knowing what's going on?

13 and 14, well, that's a different story.

[David__77]

26. Children - even before puberty - will have sex.

I have friends who had full-on intercourse at age 8 or so, with children their own age. It's more common than many would think. But I suppose "society" would rather pretend that not exist.

[Art_from_Ark]

34. I couldn't imagine such a thing at age 8

No way, no how.
My interest in girls at that age (and all through elementary school, for that matter) was going to their house (or vice versa) and playing board games, kickball, hide-and-go-seek, and that sort of thing.