Sex Ed Advisory Committee to Hold Open Meeting

Image: The pledge card handed out by SMART program guest educators in East Lansing High School in years’ past.

The Reproductive Health Advisory Committee (RHAC) of the East Lansing Board of Education will meet tomorrow, Wednesday, June 3, at 7:00PM in the Pinecrest Elementary School Library to discuss District reproductive health curriculum. This meeting is open to the public.

Michigan law requires that any school district in the state offering sex education classes to its students must establish a “Sex Education Advisory Board” to “recommend materials and methods to the Board of Education” in compliance with current law, and to “establish goals and objectives for pupil knowledge and skills designed to reduce rates of sexual activity, pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, review materials and methods and make implementation recommendations to the Board of Education.”

East Lansing’s RHAC serves this “Advisory Board” function. As of press time, Eli has been unable to obtain the identities of RHAC members, although a number of individuals have tried to ascertain the committee membership.

Disclosure: The issue of East Lansing’s reproductive health curriculum has risen to the surface since Alice Dreger (ELi’s board chair and publisher) live-tweeted her son’s sex ed class at East Lansing High School on April 15.

In the wake of Dreger’s commentary, as the Lansing State Journal reported, East Lansing parents and members of the school board discovered that the High School was paying representatives of the SMART program to provide the State-mandated abstinence component of sex education. SMART is affiliated with Pregnancy Services of Greater Lansing, which is, according to their Facebook page, “a Christian, non-profit ministry dedicated to preserving life from it's [sic] earliest moment.”

ELi obtained answers to some questions about tomorrow’s meeting from the leaders of ELHS Students for Gender Equality. The students who answered these questions are Sarah Hansen, Brianna Wells, Sara Faverman, and Aiden Foster-Fishman.

Asked whether SGE reps are planning to attend the meeting tomorrow, and if so, why, the SGE leaders indicated that they “are trying to have as many of our people as possible at the meeting tomorrow” because they “want the Sex Ed committee to know that this issue isn't going away” and that students are “still here trying to finish what we started early this year: creating a more comprehensive sex ed curriculum.” 

Asked who they think should attend this meeting, SGE’s leaders responded that “anyone who attends an East Lansing school, or has a child in an East Lansing school should attend. These meetings are to decide upon the best possible sex education curriculum for our students, and in order to do that, students and parents must be involved. “

Pinecrest Elementary School is located at 1811 Pinecrest Drive, in East Lansing