Schools get creative to deal with a wave of sex-ed opt-outs

Some GTA school boards won’t deliver any of the new curriculum until spring, using time to build trust with parents.

Thestar.com
Sept. 6, 2015
By Louise Brown

What do you do if 200 kids in a school want to opt-out of sex ed on religious grounds?

This fall, for the first time in Ontario, that’s a real possibility facing some principals.

As political firestorms continue over the province’s new health curriculum, boards are bracing for an unprecedented wave of requests for children to be excused because of their faith.

While a mere handful of lessons per year actually deal with sexual health, requests for exemptions could number in the hundreds in some GTA neighborhoods - and that poses a logistical nightmare.

Where do you put them all while their classmates learn about sexual health? Who would supervise them? If there’s no space and no staff, do you ask dissenting parents to take their kids home? If so, do you schedule these classes at the end of the day to make pickup easier?

Or would that undermine a curriculum that experts insist is sorely needed?

“We try to talk to parents about why there’s a change in the curriculum; it really comes down to the promotion of well-being and health for children,” said Tricia Dyson, superintendent of the Halton District School Board. But if parent information sessions and meetings with the principal don’t prevent record opt-outs, “we don’t have additional staffing to provide supervision,” she said.

“If I had 100 children in a school or even five children in a small school and the principal is out of the building for the day, it’s a phone call home” to parents to pick up their children, she said.

There’s no ability to provide that much supervision.

Public school boards are getting creative to try to avert such disruption.

Peel has decided to delay the lessons on sexual health until after March Break, to give teachers more time to build trust with worried parents. But the board won’t postpone them until the very last three days of the school year, as proposed by parent Jotvinder Sodhi, one of the leaders of the provincial protest against the new curriculum.

“We wouldn’t recommend that with any other part of the curriculum, so why would we do that with the health curriculum?” asked superintendent Jeff DeFreitas.

Meanwhile, Halton has chosen to deliver the lessons even earlier than usual - in fall, rather than winter - because it sees the material as urgent. Grade 8 boys and girls need help making smart decisions as early as possible, said Dyson.

“In the Grade 8 (curriculum) they have to demonstrate the ability to assess situations for potential dangers and devise strategies for avoiding such situations,” she said — such as getting in a car with someone who has been drinking. “Grade 8s are dealing with this from the get-go.”

As well, Grade 1 children “need to (be able to) name their body parts if they get hurt in the playground or if they’ve been abused,” she added. “That can’t wait until June.”

Halton has created a web page devoted to the updated curriculum, as well as a 24-minute webcast honed with input from small groups of parents. Schools will have teachers of different grades and classes teaching the sex ed lessons at different times to stagger the impact of absences.

The Toronto District School Board has sent principals a sweeping front-line guide on how to debunk the myths and uphold the new curriculum, while respecting parents’ right to object on religious grounds.

But students will not be excused from talk about equity and gender identity, issues protected by Ontario’s Human Rights Code, warned Beth Butcher, executive superintendent for teaching and learning.

“In English class, you might have a novel with a homosexual character, and we encourage a cross-curricular approach to learning.”

The York Region District School Board is preparing information for parent councils, said Heather Sears, the board’s superintendent of curriculum, but will not accept the mass “opt-out” form letters circulated by groups opposed to the new curriculum. When Ontario schools determine whether to accommodate a student’s religious beliefs, they must meet face-to-face with each family to understand their specific concerns.

Each board is trying, in its own way, to encourage students to take part in the new curriculum, which includes new sections on cyber-bullying and sexting and the importance of consent. It is the optional “prompts” offered to teachers for handling students’ questions on topics such as anal sex and masturbation that have triggered outcry from some parents who feel they’re too graphic.

“We’ll exhaust every opportunity to keep kids in school, so we want to deliver these units in spring to provide parents and teachers time to develop strong relationships and have those conversations,” said Peel’s coordinating superintendent, Jeff deFreitas.

The board will provide a parents’ guide to the curriculum by the end of September, but parents who arrive this week demanding that their kids be excused from sex ed will be told such requests will be handled later in the year.

Schools must give parents two weeks’ written notice of lessons on sexual health, said Tony Pontes, director of education for the Peel public board.

“Some parents are thinking they have to take their children out of school permanently,” Pontes said, yet “in Grade 1, the curriculum for which parents might have concerns (naming genitals) might be one period.”