Fort Worth ISD students are a step closer to again being taught sex education in school classrooms.
Yet, before the board-appointed School Health Advisory Council voted to recommend a sex education curriculum called Choosing the Best to parents and Fort Worth ISD board members, the Zoom meeting was interrupted by porn.
The Jan. 22 meeting was a roller coaster, attendee Christi Beck said.
“Get it off the screen,” parents in attendance yelled after a pornographic video was broadcast over the Zoom stream.
“This is what our kids are watching in school,” one parent yelled. “This is disgusting! Stop forcing us to watch this,” another parent screamed, as SHAC members running the meeting scrambled to turn off the video.
After a second pornographic video began broadcasting to attendees, SHAC members disconnected the Zoom and took a 15-minute break.
“Our team is currently investigating the incident, and we will be taking appropriate actions,” a council spokesman said.
After returning from break, and discussing what was originally planned to be the focus of the night, SHAC members voted to recommend sex education curriculum Choosing the Best to Fort Worth ISD board members and parents across the district.
For Beck and many other parents, anger turned quickly into elation.
“It has been a long battle,” said Beck, a community member who withdrew her children from Fort Worth ISD and homeschooled them through high school. “This has been a battle of five-plus years.”
It began when Fort Worth ISD bought and adopted a California-based curriculum called ETR HealthSmart in 2014. The district bought the curriculum’s instructional materials for all grade levels. Sex education is included in lessons for middle school and high school students.
In November 2022, SHAC members recommended the adoption of a new curriculum from HealthSmart.
Beck, SHAC members and residents in attendance, some of whom held posters reading “Choosing the Best” and “No HealthSmart In Schools,” have claimed HealthSmart’s curriculum is “ideology-filled” and “agenda-based.”
Beck said the curriculum’s images are “very vile,” and said labels the curriculum provides like “body with a penis” and “body with a vagina” are troubling and “not scientifically accurate.”
Regardless of the curriculum’s content, Superintendent Angélica Ramsey halted the adoption of HealthSmart’s new curriculum after several missteps in the curriculum’s recommendation process.
In January 2023, Ramsey announced the district was restarting its curriculum adoption process. Since then, the vocal majority has spoken out against HealthSmart.
“There’s a lot of flaws … fetal development isn’t a part of their curriculum,” said Kathryn Pompa, an SHAC member with an elementary student in the district who voted to recommend Choosing the Best.
She mentioned that Choosing the Best is more “abstinence-focused,” something many parents and community members have noted they want in their kids’ sex education. She received a loud burst of applause from attendees.
“It’s truly an abstinence-based program,” Beck said. “There are a lot of pluses to Choosing the Best. … They’ve shown that it works.”
Beck and Pompa mentioned a study included in Choosing the Best’s report that showed rates of abstinence rising after Texas students studied the curriculum.
Not all in attendance were convinced by the results.
SHAC member Laurie George spoke out about the study’s limitations.
“The data is 15 years old,” George said. “And, it says right there, ‘The year after these children receive this curriculum, they may retain none of these pro-abstinence behaviors.’”
George said she’s concerned about spending taxpayer money on something for which the benefits are statistically uncertain.
When the council’s vote was announced, Choosing the Best was named as SHAC’s recommendation and cheers rang out in the meeting room.
Fort Worth ISD’s school board will discuss whether to approve and adopt Choosing the Best as the district’s new sex education curriculum sometime in February.
Disclosure: Laurie George, a member of the Fort Worth Report’s reader advisory council, is a member of Fort Worth ISD’s School Health Advisory Council.
Matthew Sgroi is an education reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at matthew.sgroi@fortworthreport.org or @MatthewSgroi1 on X, formerly known as Twitter. At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.
This article first appeared on Fort Worth Report and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.