Sex ed would be opt-in, not opt-out instruction under House bill

The state requires schools to offer sex education classes, but House Bill 196 would strike a provision requiring school systems to have an opt-out provision for students whose parents don't want their children to get the instruction. Instead, the bill would require schools to obtain parental permission before a child could attend the classes.

"It does not change our instruction. It does not change the instructions or the standards. It would just change a process," said Brian Glendenning, the Wake County Public School System's senior administrator for K-12 healthful living.

"We do worry about the administrative burden on schools," said Elizabeth Finley of SHIFT NC, a nonprofit working to improve adolescent and young adult sexual health. "An opt-in policy is much harder to implement, and we know that schools and teachers are already pretty stretched."

The current structure allows parents to excuse their children from certain sex education topics or the entire course, Glendenning said.

"Our current opt-out is a letter that goes home, and a parent that wants to opt out sends something back to the school," he said. "An opt-in then, it would be papers for every single student coming back to the school."

"The challenge is that, when you have an opt-in policy, those sheets of paper could get lost in a book bag or misplaced or forgotten to return," Finley said. "So, it's not necessarily reflective of whether a parent wants their children to participate or not. Very often, it just gets lost in the shuffle."

The bill also would require parental consent for students to learn where contraception or abortion referral services can be obtained. Current law leaves it up to local school boards to set policies on how such information is provided.

The bill's sponsors, Reps. Michael Speciale, R-Craven, Julia Howard, R-Davie, and Larry Pittman, R-Cabarrus, didn't respond to requests for comment Thursday.

The North Carolina Values Coalition said in a statement that the group supports "the right for parents to be fully informed and maintain control over their child's education, especially in the consent and participation in reproductive health and safety education."