The Gwinnett County school board wants to adopt a new health curriculum but take more time to determine the sex education component, the latest step in an ongoing debate that’s drawn strong community interest and input from the state’s top education official.
The decision at Thursday’s work session wasn’t binding — the board took a straw poll vote in which the majority favored moving forward with HealthSmart while conducting a separate sex ed review. The board still needs to take an official vote to purchase HealthSmart, the proposed new curriculum.
Vice Chair Steve Knudsen and board member Mary Kay Murphy said they would prefer to start the entire process over to make sure the board and district have time to make the best decision.
They have previously expressed concerns with HealthSmart and indicated support for sticking with Choosing the Best, the sex education Gwinnett has used for 22 years. State School Superintendent Richard Woods has written the district twice with similar recommendations.
HealthSmart’s sex education component is considered comprehensive. Supporters have said the change is best for students, teaching risk reduction strategies while being more inclusive and realistic about decisions that teenagers make. Opponents have said the curriculum does not adequately promote abstinence, among several other criticisms.
Tasha Guadalupe, the Gwinnett school district’s director of health and physical education, said the district doesn’t have the proper health resources to meet state standards. Not purchasing a health curriculum would require piecemeal assembly of resources for the next school year.
Board member Adrienne Simmons said the high volume of negative feedback about HealthSmart has been fixated on the sex ed component, so that shouldn’t delay purchasing the rest of the health curriculum. Board Chair Tarece Johnson and member Karen Watkins shared similar feelings.
Time constraints prevented the board from making some key decisions, such as when it would vote on HealthSmart or what the next steps for choosing the sex education program would be.
Those who sided with adopting HealthSmart said they wanted to improve community engagement in the state’s largest school district and may not want to base their decision off the district’s survey about the resource. The results were strongly negative, with well over 90% of the 1,800 total responses advising against using the curriculum.
“Who responded to (the survey)?” Watkins asked. “If it isn’t a representative population of Gwinnett, ... is it the response we make an overhaul on?” She also said the people most likely to take a survey are the ones most critical.
Knudsen said they shouldn’t be dismissive of the survey results, noting it was available to the public on the district website. He said the emails and other feedback he’s received were nearly all critical as well.
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