Cali Byrd is a junior at Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Dallas. She remembers in eighth grade a group came to talk to her class about sexually transmitted infections.
âThey had a bunch of tennis balls and wrote [the names] of STIs on them,â Cali said. âThen they had a couple of kids come up, put on gloves, and said, âIf he throws the ball to her and she has a glove on, then sheâs protected. But if she doesnât have a glove on, then sheâll get the disease or something.â It was really weird.â
Cali said the instructors never explained what the STIs were, just that people should wear condoms to prevent them. âIt really was not helpful,â she said.
That presentation was the last time she got any formal sex education in school, she said. Health education is not a mandatory offering .
In 2020, Cali started training to be a peer educator through . âI learned about specific STIs, what they did, viral versus bacterial. I learned different methods of birth control,â Cali said. âIt was a lot of catching up.â
After more than two decades, the Texas State Board of Education has updated its health curriculum, including sexual health, for elementary and middle school students. The new curriculum, which will be taught starting in fall 2022, includes detailed information about birth control and STIs for the first time.
But it leaves out key elements sex-ed advocates wanted to see. And despite the stateâs high teen birth rate, a recent policy change by Texas leaders rather than opt out of their childrenâs sex education, which means some kids might not receive any formal school instruction.
Working to Normalize Sexual Health Conversations
The new curriculum comes after years of work from organizations across Texas that are trying to mainstream conversations about sexual health.
âYour reproductive and sexual health is really important for your life,â said Terry Greenberg, founder of the . âNot only does it determine your personal health, itâs the health of your family. If youâre not giving kids that, youâre not equipping them to be adults.â
Teen birth rates across the country , according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. But Texas ranks among the top 10 states for high teen birth rates, with 22.4 teen births per 1,000 females ages 15-19, compared with Californiaâs rate of 11 per 1,000, or Vermontâs at 7 per 1,000, according to 2019 .
Advocates like Greenberg in Texas think better education about contraceptives and pregnancy prevention would improve these statistics. support this idea. Providing students with can reduce unintended consequences like teen pregnancy and STIs.
âI mean, any unintended pregnancy is kind of on us,â Greenberg said. âWhy didnât we supply people with what they needed?â
The new curriculum is still abstinence-first. But including detailed information on contraceptives and STIs is a win for Greenberg and advocates statewide, such as those with the .
âThese standards hadnât been updated since âTitanicâ was out in theaters,â said director of policy and data with the organization. âIt had been a minute.â
The new curriculum does not include instruction on . Those omissions reflect a larger battle for control over what information kids can access, which has resulted in lawmaker-led , attempts to curb school , and opposition to gender-affirming care for .
Texas and at least four other states have . Students there will not be taught about sexual health, puberty, or reproduction unless parents â or other caregivers â give permission. Texas leaders, including Gov. Greg Abbott, said parents should have control over what their children learn in schools.
Biundo said sheâs concerned that one missed piece of paper or email will mean some kids will miss the opportunity.
âWhen I think about the paperwork that Iâve fished out of my childâs backpack three weeks late, this kind of terrifies me,â she said.
âThe big concern with the opt-in policy is that some kids will just slip through the cracks,â Biundo said. âMaybe theyâre not living with a parent or guardian, or maybe they donât have a parent or guardian whoâs closely engaged. Those might be the kids that need this information the most.â
Greenberg said an opt-in policy is a âhuge logistical barrier for kids.â
âDo you really care about the reproductive health of these kids? You have to give them information,â she said.
Combating Shame and Myths
J.R. Chester has seen all this before. Slow updates and lack of access to information have been a pattern since she started as a community health worker with Parkland Health Hospital System more than 10 years ago.
âI was a repeat teen mom,â Chester said. âOur oldest is 16. He is just a year younger than I was when I got pregnant with him. Then, after I gave birth to him, three months later, we were pregnant with No. 2.â
The Dallas native said she doesnât remember anyone explaining to her what contraceptives were, or why she menstruated every month.
âNo one took the time to tell me, this is why your body is doing this,â Chester said.
Chester said her work is to make sure that kids can ask questions, without shame or guilt.
There are still a lot of that Chester works to debunk, even with adults.
âA lot of my female students had no idea that sexual intercourse didnât take place in the same hole that they urinated from,â said Chester. âThey had this myth in their mind that âOh, well, canât you just pee it out?â I hear that a lot as a method of pregnancy prevention.â
At home, she talks with her own kids about health at every stage of their development. For her younger children, that means using the anatomically correct names for body parts. With her teenagers, health conversations include discussions about boundaries and safe sexual encounters.
âA lot of our education in this household has been between parents and children,â Chester said. âThatâs because I have the resources and the education to provide it. If I wasnât in this role, and hadnât been doing this for 10 years, I donât know if I would know what to say to them, honestly.â
Biundo, Chester, and high school student Cali Byrd want sex education to be more accessible.
Cali said she wishes decision-makers at the state level would communicate with students like her as they craft the health education plan.
âThey need to look at it from the perspective of a child in school,â Cali said. âYou canât make a law concerning how someone lives their life when you donât understand how they live their life.â
Cali also thinks thereâs too much left out of the new curriculum.
âThat is honestly the root of all the problems, is if we just teach âDonât have sex,â youâre not teaching about sex,â Cali said. âI just hope we move past that and, instead, actually teach them what they need to know.â
The health curriculum implementation , but Chester hopes the recent changes will generate open conversations between parents and kids.
âI think people hear âsexual healthâ and some of them get really squeamish about it,â she said. âBut sexual health is your understanding of your body, your basic functioning, how youâre put together, why. Thatâs really harmful to shame something that is normal.â
Opt-in policies seem to be gaining ground in Texas. A recent change from the state now requires parental permission to teach kids about .
âThis really concerns us,â Chester said. âThis means that if you have a child who has been abused by their parents, that child would have to get permission from their abusers to learn about child abuse. We think this runs the risk of withholding really crucial information from the kids that need it the most.â
This story is from a partnership that includes ,Ěý, and .