Every school district is required to have a School Health Advisory Council. One of its duties is to approve sex education curriculum for the district. You can find information for your SHAC by going to your district homepage, going to "Departments", then going to "Student Services". From the Student Services page, you can click on SHAC on the left-hand side.
The SHAC page gives you SHAC meeting minutes. Let's look at the minutes from the March 30, 2023 meeting:
You can see on agenda item number 5 that the new 6th grade curriculum from "Living Well Aware: My Choice, My Life" is available.
If you go to livingwellaware.com and click on "Resources" at the top, you will find the Wellness Score and the Wellness Score Guide. These are resources that teachers can use with their students. Students in Belton ISD use Chromebooks. This information would be recorded on the Chromebook. Who has access to this personal information? Why are they asking this information? Are you comfortable with the school asking about your child's psychological wellness? Spiritual wellness? Financial wellness? What is done with this personal information?
Under "Resources" on the livingwellaware.com website, you can also find the Belief System, which is another resource teachers can use:
Are you comfortable with your child's teacher asking your child about his or her emotional, financial, or spiritual beliefs? What about physical and social beliefs? This is an open-ended answer form, so your child can be asked details about a lot of personal information. How is this information going to be used? Are teachers in Belton ISD using these resources with their students?
If you go to the livingwellaware.com homepage and click on "Adolescent Wellness" at the top, you can access the actual 6th grade Curricula Table of Contents:
Notice in Lesson 6, that students are taught how to seek help to deal with emotional difficulties. Who are they telling students to seek help from? A "trusted adult" at school? Are they directing students to websites like the 988 Suicide Prevention site that offers volunteers to talk to kids when they call in? Are parents notified when students seek help at school for emotional difficulties?
In Lesson 7, students are taught how to "know the importance of adult mentors for support, advice, and safety". Are these adult mentors at school? Why aren't parents mentioned? "Safety" is now a code word for LGBTQ affirmation. Is this what they are talking about here?
Look at the rest of the lessons and decide if these are topics you are comfortable letting another adult teach to your child. Notice that there is a lot of leeway for teacher and student discussion regarding "strategies" and "discussing the many ways we are all unique".
Parents can:
opt out of sex education for their child
opt out of any surveys taken by their child
volunteer to be on the SHAC
What else is the SHAC meeting about? Get informed and get invoved!