Fort Worth schools hear from parents on sex-ed curriculum
Valeria Nevarez, 22, holds a sign to protest the HealthSmart sexual education curriculum during a school board meeting at the Fort Worth ISD Teaching and Learning Center on Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2023. Nevarez helped organize several dozen concerned citizens and parents to protest HealthSmart, which has supplied the district with its supplies since 2014, saying the content is “inappropriate” for school-aged children.
mcook@star-telegram.com
Fort Worth
Parents, upset about potential updates to a sexual-education curriculum the Fort Worth school district is considering, told the board of education on Tuesday the curriculum “sexualizes children.”
Around 30 parents spoke about the sex education curriculum HealthSmart, a sexual-education program the district has been using since 2014 but has been updated, according to district documents. Of those parents, only one was in favor of the potential curriculum.
The Star-Telegram has requested access to review the curriculum with its possible changes.
Parents told the school board they were concerned about education on topics including gender identity and sexual health. Some parents told the board they wanted to see a Christian sexual-education program taught, while others said that sexual education of any type should be kept out of schools and provided by parents.
One Fort Worth school district graduate and a youth leader at her church, 22-year-old Valeria Nevarez, said she and other religious leaders in the community rallied churches to go and speak to the board. She called the inclusion of gender identity and transgender issues in the proposed sexual education “unscientific” and shared worries that the curriculum was not age-appropriate.
Some called the idea of gender fluidity “unnatural” and “laughable” during the public speaking portion of the board’s Tuesday night meeting.
Many were also concerned about the way in which the district has gone about selecting a sexual-education curriculum. They felt that the district needed to be more transparent, including providing parents with full copies of the material that would be taught. Several said they requested access to the material but were denied. Others said they were only able to get access after filing open-records requests.
Caleb Backholm, a student at Southwestern Theological Seminary and candidate for Fort Worth City Council, said the curriculum was “teaching religion, not biology, and teaching it wrongly.”
“We don’t have a body and a soul, we are a body and a soul,” Backholm said.
He also said there is “no such thing as truly transgender or gender fluid” and called the sexual-education curriculum an attack on Christianity.
“Parents don’t want a non-Christian curriculum,” Backholm said.
The district faced criticism Jan. 10 after the district was scheduled to vote on a resolution “Concerning Implementation and Enforcement of School Safety Measures.” The resolution was actually about convening the School Health Advisory Council for the purpose of recommending a curriculum on sex education.
The board voted that night, with no discussion, to rescind the resolution after parents and former students said the title of the resolution was misleading.
Claudia Garibay, a spokesperson for the district, told the Star-Telegram that week that the title was an unintentional error, adding that the district will “continue its collaborative review process of all items presented to the board in an effort to minimize such errors in the future.”
Hailey Sinclair, a parent and nurse, was the only person who spoke Tuesday night in favor of the updates to the curriculum. But she agreed the district needed to be clearer and more transparent about the curriculum.
“How many parents have seen this curriculum?” Sinclair asked.
But Sinclair called the rates of sexually-transmitted infections among students “startling” and said that the lack of quality sexual education in the district needs to be corrected.
When Sinclair’s two minutes to speak to the board were up, audience members who were opposed to the updates to the curriculum booed her.
This story was originally published January 24, 2023 10:19 PM.