New Health Education Guidelines Approved!

Thanks to everyone who showed up to testify in support of the DC Health Learning Standards. The DC State Board of Education approved the new standards last night. The Examiner Reports:

Thursday's vote follows a report by the DC Appleseed Center for Law and Justice that said the lack of a comprehensive HIV-AIDS education program was putting District of Columbia students at risk.

The new standards cover such things as mental health, nutrition, fitness and sex ed. Officials say they are a crucial first step in addressing problems like D.C.'s high rate of HIV infection, as well as things like obesity and teen pregnancy.

D.C. health officials have said Washington has the highest AIDS rate among major cities across the country.

Of course this is the beginning, not the end of this process. We need a lot more from Michelle Rhee and the Department of Education:

We must go from having standards to enforcing them. According to the 2005 Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS), a survey of DC Public School students conducted by the CDC and DC Public Schools, 17.5% of middle school students and 9.5% of high school students say they were never taught about HIV/AIDS in school. We must make sure that every student in DC public schools is taught about HIV/AIDS.

We need a timely release of the 2007 DC YRBS data from DCPS. While we got a preview of the data in September and were promised the data in October, we are STILL waiting for the release. This data would have greatly informed the DC Board of Education hearing, and it's very disappointing that we don't yet have it.

We need specific and measurable goals for DC Public Schools to monitor their progress on HIV/AIDS. We can do this by analyzing the 2007 YRBS data and setting goals for improvement when the YRBS is conducted again in 2009.

We need a commitment from DCPS to analyze the brand new data on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and questioning (LGBQ) that is included for the first time in the 2007 YRBS. DCPS has said they plan to do this, but again, it's been four months and we're still waiting. We need to know who is going to do this work, what specific health indicators they are going to analyze for potential LGBQ health disparities, and when it will be done by. Set goals. Assign responsibilities. Make it happen!

We need the DCPS Youth Risk Behavior Survey Advisory Committee to meet on a regular basis to be part of this process. The advisory board which is supposed to meet regularly hasn't actually met since October 2006. This is unacceptable.

We need Mayor Adrian Fenty to reject federal abstinence only funding, which requires us to spend matching DC tax dollars on abstinence-only-until-heterosexual-marriage programs which have been proven to be uneffective. A coalition of DC youth serving organizations has asked Fenty to join the eleven states that reject these funds.