PASCACK VALLEY AREA—Westwood Regional School District parents who have concerns about topics raised in the state’s updated health and physical education curriculum for elementary, middle and high school students might be able to opt out, school officials say.
As the state Department of Education explains online, New Jersey requires that all 1.4 million of its students “participate in a comprehensive sequential health and physical education program that emphasizes the natural interdisciplinary connection among wellness, health, and physical education.”
It says, “All students will acquire the knowledge and skills of what is most essential to become individuals who possess health and physical literacy and pursue a life of wellness by developing the habits necessary to live healthy, productive lives that positively impact their families, schools and communities.”
WWRSD, serving families in the Township of Washington and Westwood, had been looking to begin the curriculum this September. Acting superintendent Dr. Jill Mortimer said she will send families an explanatory letter in early November.
At the Sept. 23 meeting of the school board, Mortimer said no sensitive health topics will be taught in the district until parents are informed of contents and informed of their options.
“We recognize wholeheartedly that there are different opinions about the new health standards and we respect all of those opinions,” she said.
We reached out to superintendents as well at Pascack Regional High School District, and the Emerson, Hillsdale, Montvale, Park Ridge, River Vale, and Woodcliff Lake public schools.
Emerson Superintendent of Schools Brian P. Gatens told Pascack Press on Oct. 6, “We are planning to revise/rewrite our health curriculum this year based on the new standards. For the October agenda, we’ll approve the staff members who will work with our director of curriculum to sketch out the curriculum. It will then be shared with the BOE Academic Committee, and then eventually onto the whole board for approval at a future public meeting.”
Gatens added, “Each summer we share a Family Life/Health Curriculum letter with our parents, who have the chance to review the curriculum.”
Pascack Valley Regional High School District Interim Superintendent of Schools Daniel Fishbein told Pascack Press on Oct. 6 that the district recently approved a revised curriculum compliant with the NJ Student Learning Standards.
“We are working on a policy revision in this same area which would be approved at a future board meeting,” he said.
At WWRSD’s Aug. 26 school board meeting, trustee Michele Sembler, the district’s curriculum committee liaison, described some of the new topics to be covered by the health curriculum.
Topics for K-2 include use of correct terminology to identify body parts and explain how they work together; listing medically accurate names for body parts; and discussing the range of ways people express their gender and how gender role stereotypes may limit behavior.
New topics for grades 3-5 include explanations of common human sexual development and the role of hormones, romantic and sexual feelings, masturbation, mood swings, and timing of pubertal onset.
Other topics: the relationship between sexual intercourse and human reproduction; explaining the range of ways pregnancy can occur (for example, IVF and surrogacy), and differentiating between sexual orientation and gender identity.
In middle school, concepts to be taught include awareness of stages of pregnancy; factors that contribute to making healthy decisions about sex; explaining laws that address age of sexual consent; child pornography, sexting, safety and sex trafficking, access to health care services, defining vaginal, oral, and anal sex; and describing strategies that sex traffickers use to recruit youth.
High school health topics include tactics sex traffickers use to recruit youth; the human sexual response cycle, including the role of hormones and pleasure; analysis of laws related to minors’ ability to give and receive sexual consent; and explicit media.
“I just want to say that these are state requirements; this is not the Westwood Regional School District putting this into the curriculum. This is something that’s coming down that’s mandated from the New Jersey Department of Ed,” said Sembler.
She said the committee was recommending the approval of The Great Body Shop, a K-6 health curriculum sold by The Children’s Health Market of Wilton, Conn.
NJ DOE says the New Jersey Student Learning Standards (NJSLS) are reviewed and revised every five years and that the 2020 NJSLS in Comprehensive Health and Physical Education were adopted by the State Board of Education on June 3, 2020.
According to the state DOE, school districts should have policies in place to notify parents about their right to excuse a child from health/family life education without penalty.
Click to access the 66-page 2020 NJSLS for Comprehensive Health and Physical Education [PDF].