STARKVILLE — After a split vote Tuesday night, the Starkville School District will begin teaching safe-sex practices in addition to encouraging abstinence.
The board voted 3-1 — Lee Brand cast the nay vote — to adopt an abstinence-plus curriculum for the 2012-13 school year. The new curriculum will include instruction on safe sex, sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy. Abstinence-plus curriculum would be age appropriate and approved by the Mississippi Department of Education, officials said.
SSD Public Information Officer Nicole Thomas said parents must opt in to the sex education course.
Districts across the state must choose between abstinence-only, which SSD and all other local school districts had been using, and abstinence-plus, before the start of the 2012-13 school year.
“We’ve received several comments on this policy, and many are in favor of abstinence-plus,” SSD Interim Superintendent Dr. Beth Sewell said.
SSD doesn’t have sex-education curriculum and has offered abstinence-only material. SSD had a grant program called “Abstinence Until Marriage,” but the grant ended last year.
The curriculum change and 10 other policy changes made during the board’s Tuesday meeting were recommended by the Mississippi School Boards Association and will take effect immediately. The board unanimously approved eight of the policy changes, most pertaining to the school calendar and intern programs, in one vote.
The board discussed at length the option to adopt a policy to give them the authority to regulate recording at board meetings. MSBA suggested requiring prior notice to record meetings and allowing a board to halt disruptive recordings. Because the policy suggestion was vague, Board Attorney Dalton McAlpin reviewed close to 20 city and county school district policies and drafted a more detailed version for SSD.
Board President Dr. Keith Coble decided requiring people to give advanced written notice to record a public meeting would create problems. The board voted unanimously to approve the policy, minus the stipulations of written notice, battery-powered cameras and written consent to record a student present at a meeting.
The board will have the authority to halt any recording that disrupts a meeting with loud noise or lights.
The board also unanimously approved to extend the Professional Educator Code of Ethics and Conduct to all school employees. The district had the option to limit the code of conduct to faculty.
Unrelated to the policy changes recommended by MSBA, the board elected to switch to last year’s outerwear policy after two parents voiced concerns Tuesday over the ambiguity of the new policy. The 2011-12 policy required all outerwear conform to the uniform code, which requires clothes be gold, gray or black and free from logos. Parents were confused by what constituted outwear, as some students wear light jackets or sweaters as part of their in-school attire.
The board elected to adopt last year’s policy, which would allow a logo that only covers up to 10 percent a garment.
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