State Officials Battling Over Selection Of Abstinence Teachers Lawmakers At Odds With Health Officials Over Federal Funds
It appears Washington will get millions of federal dollars over the next five years to teach kids the joys of sexual abstinence. Now comes the difficult part - selecting the teachers.
Federal money totalling about $3.7 million over the next five years is all but in the bag for Washington, state officials say. But a fight is under way between state legislators and the state Department of Health over which groups are best suited to teach school children and teenagers that abstinence until marriage is the way to go.
Groups that have expressed interest in applying for money to teach sexual abstinence courses range from the liberal Planned Parenthood and conservative Teen-Aid to the Camp Fire Boys and Girls, local health departments and public school districts.
Some lawmakers of both parties believe that Democratic Gov. Gary Locke’s administration’s view of how teachers should be selected goes beyond what Congress mandated when it made the money available to states.
For their part, health administrators say they are simply doing the job they are charged with doing. Their job is to be sure that whatever gets taught is based in scientific fact, they say.
That’s fine, legislative critics assert, but the department is going too far and shutting out many applicants who find the rules too burdensome and squishy.
“The health department is definitely putting its own spin on the federal law,” contends Rep. Jim Kastama, D-Puyallup, a member of a joint legislative oversight committee formed to make sure the health department does its job.
Kastama on Friday said the department is putting too many vague conditions in its rules for deciding who among applicants will qualify for the federal funds - conditions not permitted by the federal law. That makes it too hard for many groups even to apply, he said.
To the contrary, said Greg Smith, one of the department’s lobbyists to the Legislature. “I do not believe that the department is putting undue hardship on anybody. I do believe what the department is doing is to hold this program to the same standards and requirements of other health programs.”
The issue came to a boil late Thursday during a meeting between the Joint Legislative Oversight Committee on Abstinence, Education and Motivation and Smith’s boss, Assistant Health Secretary Maxine Hayes.
Some on the committee noted that the federal law requires, for example, that abstinence education curricula teach that “sexual activity outside of marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects.”
They asked Hayes if she would approve an abstinence course that presented that teaching to 13-year-olds.
Only, Hayes answered, if the teachers could prove to her that the youngsters would be harmed. Sen. Val Stevens, R-Arlington, the committee chairwoman, said she found Hayes’ statement “ridiculous,” contending that common sense is all that is needed to say sexual activity among young teenagers is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects.
“The point is, we have it in federal law that this element must be taught, yet we have the Department of Health setting conditions,” Kastama said. “That is wrong. We may not like the federal law, but it is the law and it is our duty to carry it out.”
Hayes said she was willing to seriously entertain any group’s request for funding to teach abstinence. But she held firm to her position that her department has a duty to ensure that all information dispensed by teachers be based in fact.
There has been no indication of when the dispute will be resolved and abstinence teachers selected. xxxx WHO WILL TEACH? Groups that have expressed interest in applying for $3.7 million from the federal government to teach sexual abstinence courses range from the liberal Planned Parenthood and conservative Teen-Aid to the Camp Fire Boys and Girls, local health departments, and public school districts. The state Department of Health will decide who gets the job.