Action Alert: Health Curriculum public comment

All hands on deck: Advocate to enhance our children’s health curriculum

Please submit a public comment to support the new draft MA Health and Physical Education Curriculum Framework by Monday, August 28.

The Healey-Driscoll administration has proposed a comprehensive health and physical education curriculum framework requiring scientifically founded standards for age-appropriate sex education that includes consent, personal safety and healthy relationships, emotional health, and material to help kids understand sexual development, related health issues and sexual identities. This framework has not been updated since 1999.

View the proposal here.

The League of Women Voters, a member of the Healthy Youth Act Coalition, has supported updating the sex ed curriculum by advocating for passage of the Healthy Youth Act for more than ten years. This Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) framework incorporates the Healthy Youth Act (H.544/S.268) language. If the draft framework is accepted, it will not be necessary for our legislators to pass the bill to update school sex education.

Please contact DESE using the sample script below before the August 28 deadline when the revised curriculum will be finalized. Large numbers of supporters of common-sense sex education need to speak up because there will be significant push-back from groups that do not want the schools to be teaching sex education at all. Your email offsets an email from those groups.

Sample text:

To: chpef@mass.gov

Subject: Support the Draft Comprehensive Health and Physical Education Curriculum Framework

Dear Assistant Director McKinnon,

I am writing in support of the Comprehensive Health and Physical Education curriculum framework proposed by the Massachusetts Department of Education. I believe that our children will benefit from the scientifically based curriculum and that educating children about sexual and relationship health issues will help them as they make critical personal decisions throughout their lives. Having an updated framework that is grounded in science will help health educators teach students what they need to know at every grade level.

Please vote to adopt the new Comprehensive Health and Physical Education plan.

Sincerely,

Your Name

Your address

If you would like, add your thoughts about what could improve the current proposal such as:

Please include more education about menstruation. This is an important issue for girls and it deserves more attention. DC Public Schools recently released Menstrual Health Education Standards, paving the way for inclusive and comprehensive menstruation education.

The framework does not directly address sexism, gender discrimination, gender-based violence, toxic masculinity, etc. This is an important omission given the focus on social and emotional learning skills in the curriculum. Please include this material.

Thank you for your advocacy!

League of Women Voters of Massachusetts

lwvma@lwvma.org | 857-452-1715| lwvma.org

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