RALEIGH, N.C. — At the Alice Aycock Poe Center for Health Education, high school students pair off for a course called “Mountain Climbing: Reducing Risk and Setting Boundaries.”
Teacher Paige Schildkamp asks the students to plan a mountain climbing trip. What would they need to pack and prepare for?
The students realize they’ll need quite a few supplies, including ones that are just in case of emergencies. Then, because group members have different fitness levels, they’ll have to think of a climb that they can all do and enjoy.
Experts often credit comprehensive sex education with helping to drastically reduce the rates of teen pregnancies in the past two decades, though access to birth control may play a bigger role.
A new state law has caused school districts to review their sex ed policies, and some interpretations could mean thousands fewer students might not take classes like the one at the Poe Center.
Some school districts initially took Senate Bill 49 to mean that parents and guardians must now opt in to reproductive health education.
After enactment of the bill in August, which Republican lawmakers titled the Parents’ Bill of Rights, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools — the state’s second-largest school system, with 130,000 students — changed to an opt-in policy.
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