Did Maine Middle School Stray Outside its Appropriate Role?
Maine Middle School to Provide Contraceptives with out Parental Permission
Last Wednesday evening, the Portland School Board ratified a plan offered by city health officials to make birth control pills and patches available to students at King Middle School. The locally elected board from Maine’s largest city voted 7-2 to make a full range of contraceptives available to students through the school’s student health center.
Under the proposal, King Middle School students will need to have parental permission to access the health care center. However, once granted permission to the center, sixth, seventh and eight graders will not need specific parental permission to obtain the contraceptives.
The approval came amidst great criticism from parents. A litany of concerns were expressed by community members, issues ranging from concerns about violating the rights of parents, conflicts with religious beliefs, conflicts, and the possibility of putting students at additional risk of cancer due to the hormones in the pill. The latest out of Portland is a petition to remove the elected School Board.
Middle School Access to Contraceptives Becomes National Story
After ratification, King Middle School found itself facing cameras from several major network news outlets late last week. Debates occurred on virtually every cable news outlet and the issue received extensive time on MSNBC, Fox, and CNN.
Pundits expressed enormous surprise by the action. Their astonishment was easy to understand considering what has transpired in some of America’s biggest cities over the past year in regards to the contraceptives issue. In fact, three separate issues, the availability, the age level, and the lack of parental permission, all came together to make the Maine school decision truly unusual.
Last February, the New York City Board of Education theoretically became the first in the nation to endorse condom distribution in all of its public high schools. Then in September, a parental consent motion was narrowly defeated.
In August, the Massachusetts Department of Education recommended that districts make condoms available to teen-agers. Reportedly only a few small districts have followed that recommendation. In October, San Francisco adopted a policy of condom availability in all of its high schools. In December, Seattle followed suit.
In addition to the aforementioned cities, other major metropolitan districts such as Philadelphia, Chicago and Baltimore have initiated pilot condom-distribution programs.
In Los Angeles, the Board of Education recently approved a policy to make condoms available at all public high schools though parents can deny such permission. As with the recent Maine hearing, emotions ran very high. At the same time, the board rejected a proposal to make condoms available to junior high school students.
Reporters in that state incorrectly stated that it would have made LA the first in the nation to make condoms available at the middle school level. King Middle School, the center of the controversy in Maine, has made condoms available to students through its health center since 2000.
Did King Middle School Stray Outside its Appropriate Role?
While the national pundits appropriately expressed surprise by the actions of King Middle School, they wrongly expressed disdain and criticism for the school and the board that approved the measure. To provide a full understanding as to why the school considered, then approved, the measure we turn to an unknown writer who identified himself only as mhouston865. Said the writer:
“Here’s the deal: An 11 year old girl shouldn’t HAVE to protect herself. That’s our job. We parents need to quit passing off our responsibilities.”
And therein rests the real problem. Many people insist that schools today are overstepping their bounds, taking on responsibilities that should remain solely within the family.
However, consider the law that mandates educator notification in cases of potential child abuse. Those who work in schools must report to their respective department of human services any suspected abuse. Educators are told that when you are in doubt you should air on the side of protecting the child and make a report. Attempting to verify the potential abuse is frowned upon – the teaching point is to leave the verification to the experts.
This of course leads to a number of reports that are simply not valid. When investigations are begun, many of those parents are furious of a suggestion of such abuse.
Still educators are told it is better to file a concern and be wrong then not to file a report. With such a philosophy becoming the norm, the idea of protecting children at all costs becomes the norm, especially the health service and guidance personnel who form the front line for issues related to children and abuse issues.
There are some who can draw a line simply between that protection scenario and the one occurring at King Middle School. I cannot. According to health officials, five students at the school reported sexual activity a year ago. Does it not stand to reason that health officials at the school would want to protect those five individuals from a potential pregnancy?
As mhouston865 writes, “An 11 year old girl shouldn’t HAVE to protect herself.” But if the adults in her home life are not protecting her, then it has become an expectation of that young girl’s school that the educators should step in and provide that protection.
Protecting children is a mandated responsibility for educators. Instead of looking to shun that responsibility, the folks in Portland are taking their role to heart.
The decision may be surprising. But expressing disdain for the school, the elected school board and/or school personnel demonstrates a profound lack of understanding of the challenges facing schools and our children today.
8 comments
I think we have to be careful how we use children who do not have a solid home life to advocate for official interference. Just a thought.
I appreciate your mentioning this post in a comment on my blog. As you might imagine, I disagree with you. You write:
“An 11 year old girl shouldn’t HAVE to protect herself.” But if the adults in her home life are not protecting her, then it has become an expectation of that young girl’s school that the educators should step in and provide that protection.
There you make a mistake, IMNSHO. The fact that one child is not being cared for properly, or is making horrendous choices even if being properly cared for, is not reason enough for the school to make a bad choice for all the remaining children. Yes, the school encourages (or at leasts tacitly approves, or accommodates) these bad choices by passing out the pill. As a parent, I cannot understand how any other parent can think that bypassing parents is a good idea.
If a child is hungry, should we pass out a candy bar, or some other so-called junk food?
Personally, I think the parents should know their children are sexually active. Notification goes both ways–if we have to notify the law if we think kids are being abused, it seems reasonable to notify parents if we think kids are doing drugs or having sex. Bypassing the parents seems to me to be the exact opposite of what *should* occur.
Your argument that the schools are obligated to protect children isn’t convincing. It’s based on the responsibility of school officials to report suspicion of abuse to the proper investigating agency, and you note that the school is restrained from investigating directly (or intervening, assuming the abuse is not immediate & on school grounds.)
This is comparable to a citizen’s obligation to another whom they see injured or in immediate peril – at least to report the matter to public safety officers. There may be obligation to render aid directly if the witness is qualified and can do so without risk to themselves, but they have no obligation nor authority to prevent a naive person from getting himself into a situation where that’s the predictable outcome.
Your argument expands the obligation to report to a mandated responsibility to protect, and in so doing assumes the authority to prevent. It is a slippery slope and the line may not be as clear as you’d like, but if the school system accepts (or usurps) this authority, the final phase will be building dormitories to house all the children within its district in order to fully supervise their development.
“The decision may be surprising. But expressing disdain for the school, the elected school board and/or school personnel demonstrates a profound lack of understanding of the challenges facing schools and our children today.”
It does not show a lack of understanding, it shows a lack of support for this decision. Many who disagree are very aware of what school systems are facing because they are involved either as a teacher, administrator, support personnel, or a parent of a child attending the school.
It is not the schools place to give an Rx for contraception. They do not have the medical history of this child or family,. Contraception at a young age, or even older, is not always safe. If the parent is not informed that their child has an Rx for hormonal medication then they are not armed with valuable knowledge when something goes wrong. To not inform the parent is negligent.
Regardless of whether or not we like the way a parent chooses to raise their child it is not up to us to take their authority away unless they have abused or neglected their child. It is not surprising that a parent is unaware their child is having sex because most students don’t tell their parents that they are participating in sexual acts! Our job is to educate the students. They need to know the impact sexual activity can have on their emotional and physical well being and they need the knowledge of how to protect themselves. Beyond that, they need to seek medical attention/contraception from the health department…NOT the school nurse.
As I stated in the post you commented on, if the school feels the guardian of a child has committed a crime then it should be reported. The child is still the responsibility of the parent and this school district is overstepping bounds of not only propriety, but health safety. Just wait until the first young girl develops liver tumors and the parents sue because they were unaware their daughter was given an Rx for hormonal contraception. At that point we will see if the school board/district thinks it is such a great idea.
If your argument is based on the assertion that we, as educators, are obligated to protect our students, then I challenge your assumption that birth control pills are going to provide that protection. While it is true that approximately one million sexually active teenage girls will become pregnant this year, THREE MILLION sexually active teenage girls will contract a sexually transmitted disease. (http://www.teencarecenter.com/index.php?s=factsheets&p=sheet8) The pill does NOTHING to protect these girls from those diseases (nor, for that matter, does it protect their partners – though no one seems to care about the young men in this equation). Dispensing the pill exposes these children to a plethora of STDs, some of which can potentially lead to sterility, cancer, and even death.
Our job, as educators, is to EDUCATE our students. Our job, as parents, is to parent our children. When we, as educators, see parents who are not doing their job, we have a legal and ethical mandate to report our suspicions. When we, as parents, see the schools usurping our rights and involving themselves in our personal lives in ways that are clearly NOT their concern, we have every right to raise our voices in protest and point the finger at each and every individual involved in the process that led to these poor decisions.
Either way, for the sake of our children, we must choose to ERR on the side of caution.
Thanks for emailing me and directing me to your post.
In a perfect world, preteens/teens would not be having sex…in a perfect world, there would be honest and open communication between parent and kids…and in a perfect world, there would be a stay at home parent in every family to oversee what children are doing.
But alas, this is not a perfect world. Parents are overworked, underpaid and exhausted. Many try to keep up with their kids and their goings on and just can’t. This is one reason why parents don’t know their kids are active. Another is because the parents are overworked (and cranky?) perhaps the child is too scared to approach mom and/or dad and tell them what is happening. Kids need another place to turn to. It is punded in our heads as kids that if we have a problem and no one to turn to, then turn to a trusted adult… a teacher, a priest or a nurse/doctor. Come one, even Dear Abby repeats that mantra on a daily basis!
And for those that didn’t look at the articles in depth, the kids have no access to pills, patches or condoms (for Jane who is so worried about STDs- they are giving these out too!) without the parents permission to be treated in the health clinic. If the parents are SO against it, don’t let your child visit the health clinic, problem solved!
Yes, this should be the parents responsibility but kudos to the school district for realizing that the parents AREN’T taking the responsibility and giving these kids options!
sex ed now! Sex communication classes now!
Thanks for the comment on my blog…i enjoyed your blog! It is good to know that there are others in the nation who are as concerned as i am!
Thanks!
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