EDITORIAL: Unwanted sex education changes a waste of time

Parents and taxpayers have three remaining opportunities to give Clark County School District officials an earful about their botched secret sex education overhaul. A good place for the public to start: Why in the world is the low-achieving district wasting time and resources on sex education changes in the first place?

There has been no public groundswell for sweeping revisions in sex education here, which is centered on abstinence. If the school district did have public support for big changes, the Legislature would have to approve them. And just last year, the Legislature, which was controlled by Democrats at the time, failed to pass a bill that would have allowed the kind of “comprehensive” sex education curriculum the school district just tried to sneak past the public.

What, exactly, is “comprehensive” sex education about? It involves instruction on gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgenders. It turns sex education, which focuses on pregnancy prevention, into sexuality education. Justifiably, the prospect of this kind of approach being taught in schools makes parents’ heads explode — not because they are intolerant and insensitive, but because they don’t trust a behemoth school system to determine when their children are ready to learn about and discuss gay sex, bisexual behavior and the various types of transgenders. And they don’t trust the system to provide that instruction in an appropriate manner, even if student participation is optional. That’s a family’s job.

This fall, the school district tried to push through such changes behind closed doors. They held invitation-only community meetings, notably lacking in parental participation, that didn’t comply with the state’s open meeting law and kept the media out. Participants reviewed a 77-page curriculum guideline created by the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, a far-left outfit that believes sexuality education should start in kindergarten.

School district staff pushed forward with the closed meetings despite the protests of School Board President Erin Cranor, who wanted them open. Amazingly, no one in the administration, from Superintendent Pat Skorkowsky on down, had any problem with the “comprehensive” agenda or with keeping parents in the dark. But parents found out, went nuts and forced the system to walk the whole thing back.

Which led to what amounts to a half-hearted apology tour by the system. At the meetings, school district staff have assured parents that, this time, they’re listening. But it’s clear the administration still wants the same thing: “comprehensive” sexuality education taught in public schools.

Four meetings have been held, and three remain. One will be held Monday at Green Valley High School in Henderson from 6 to 7:30 p.m.; one will be held Tuesday at Nevada Partners, 710 W. Lake Mead Blvd., in North Las Vegas from 9:30 to 11 a.m.; and one will be held Tuesday at Rancho High School in Las Vegas from 6 to 7:30 p.m. From these meetings, the public is assured, the school district will propose curriculum changes, which will be presented to the public and the district’s Sex Education Advisory Committee. The School Board will consider all the input and the proposed changes Dec. 11.

This isn’t about whether people of all sexual orientations should be accepted. Of course they should be accepted. Gay marriage is now legal in Nevada and states across the country. This newspaper supported gay marriage when the vast majority of Nevadans and Americans opposed it.

What should parents recommend? Leave sex education alone. The 2015 Legislature will be concerned with far more important education issues to address sexuality reform.

The Clark County School District has a great many problems to fix, including poor graduation rates, an English language instruction crisis, rampant grade inflation and social promotion and an overall lack of academic rigor. Sexuality education is a solution in search of a problem.