LITTLE ROCK — Several state Department of Health officials said the state will apply for a new federal program that could change what Arkansas teenagers are taught in sex-education classes.
Since the mid-1990s the federal government has offered grants for courses that teach sexual abstinence.
A program created by the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will provide grants for including information about contraceptives while still stressing abstinence. The new grants will be paid for entirely by the federal government.
A state Health Department spokesman said the state will apply for Personal Responsibility Education Program grants because it cannot afford to help fund the abstinence-only grants. Those grants had to receive 43 percent matching funds through local, state or private money.
“We have no state money to use as a match,” said Dr. Richard Nugent, the department’s recently retired branch chief for family health. The state spent $375,000 in matching funds in 2008 and$158,000 in 2009.
Arkansas could be eligible for an estimated $485,372 each year for fiscal 2010 and 2011 through the new grants, according to the U.S. Department of Health.
“Any program that can be funded with federal money is certainly more attractive at this point,” said Dr. David Grimes, the current branch chief.
Arkansas does not require public schools to teach sex education, though the Department of Education curriculum guidelines require that students be taught how sexually transmitted diseases are contracted and treated and to discuss abstinence. The curriculum does not address teaching students about contraception. It was last up-dated in 2005.
Arkansas Code Annotated 6-18-703(c) outlines the state’s policy and says that no state funds can be used for purchasing or distributing contraceptives in schools.
The Department of Health has distributed condoms at a Central High School health clinic in Little Rock since April. Health Department spokesman Ed Barham said the clinic saw six students and distributed 10 condoms to each of those students before the semester ended in late May.
Barham said the contraceptives are paid for out of federal reimbursement funds and no state money is used. They are dispersed by school staff, not state employees.
It is the only school in the state where the health department distributes contraceptives, Barham said. Parents must sign a consent form before their child can receive any form of birth control.
The 2009 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance Survey, released in June and compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and state health agencies, found 34.2 percent of high school students in the U.S. were sexually active within the three months before the survey.
In Arkansas 53.6 percent of high school students said they had had sex, compared with 46 percent nationally.
Of that number of Arkansas high school students, 58.7 percent said they used a condom the last time they had sex. Nationally that number was 61.1 percent.
The survey is conducted every two years during the spring semester at public and private schools in all states and the District of Columbia with students in ninth through 12th grades.
‘BIG PROBLEM HERE’
The federal grants go to programs that teach sex education at schools or to private youth groups.
Decisions about the program will be made quickly. The health department received application materials from the federal government around the end of July. The initial application deadline is Aug. 30.
“There’s been a short time to regroup under the new legislation,” Barham said. “Will we let this opportunity pass us by? I don’t think so.”
The application asks the state to assess potential grant recipients who reach at-risk youth such as young mothers, homeless teens, children in foster care and areas with high birthrates.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Vital Statistics System, Arkansas had the fourth-highest teenage birthrate in the nation in 2006, the most recent data available.
The state’s teenage birthrate was 62.3 per 1,000 live births, putting it below Mississippi, New Mexico and Texas, according to the CDC. The national teenage birthrate was 41.9 per 1,000 live births in 2006.
“We have a big problem here and we know that,” Barham said. “We very much welcome the help this represents.”
For nearly a decade Arkansas has partnered with the federal government to offer grants to groups that teach abstinence-only sex education to at-risk youth.
The grants are given to programs that stress the social, economic and moral implications of sex outside of marriage.
“We are aware that there are organizations that may be disappointed that the Health Department is not applying for abstinence-only funding,” Barham said. “However, we hope that it is understood that abstinence continues to be an important part of the family planning education provided though Health Department programs, even if we do not receive abstinence-only funding.”
Abstinence-only education sprang from the Welfare Reform Act of 1996, which dedicated $50 million annually, beginning with fiscal year 1998, to the State Abstinence Education Grant Program.
Federal funding directly available to groups through another grant program called the Community-Based Abstinence Education program will end in September.
Abstinence-only funding peaked in Arkansas at $1.75 million in fiscal year 2004. By 2009 that amount dropped to $293,900.
Federal funding for the State Abstinence Education Grants expired in June 2009,but the annual $50 million grant was reauthorized until 2014 by the federal healthcare law.
The state Department of Health manages the funds. It is up to the state to determine which groups get the abstinence-only grants.
CHANGE ON HORIZON
Arkansas received more than $8.9 million for abstinence-only programs between 2002 and 2009.
One of those programs, Reality Check Inc., teaches sex education to middle and high school-aged children in northwest Arkansas.
Executive Director Elizabeth Bryant said the group teaches about 13,000 young people a year.
“Parents in our area are saying this is what we want our kids to learn,” Bryant said. “We’ll go where we’re asked to go.”
In the past eight years Reality Check has received $234,743.87 through a combination of State Abstinence Education and Community-Based Abstinence Education grants, according to the state health department. Bryant said her group would reapply if the state pursued the abstinence-only grants, but said she isn’t interested in following the curriculum standards involved with the new federal sex-education funds.
She said her group isn’t willing to set aside its current curriculum “in lieu of a program that doesn’t fit the area in which we live.”
The new grants no longer require sex-education programs to teach eight precepts from the abstinence-only grants, such as that a faithful, monogamous marriage is the expected standard of sexual behavior and that sex outside of marriage has harmful psychological and physical effects.
The guidelines for the new grants list an emphasis on abstinence and contraception, along with developing healthy body image, healthy relationships and money management.
Bryant said the funding change is worrisome, but that the community already helps support Reality Check through donations and fundraisers.
“You can’t see [the funding change] on the horizon and not have a bit of concern,” Bryant said. “We are relying on our community.”
Barham said the state health department is talking with groups who might be interested in teaching sex education that includes contraception, but does not yet have a firm commitment from any group.
Barham would not provide the names of groups contacted by the state.
Groups that have communicated with the department about the grant funds include the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and Little Rock-based New Futures for Youth, according to e-mails obtained by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Arkansas can apply for the grants and run its own program, but “I think it makes sense for us to have partners in a program of this kind,” Barham said.
He said the state does not have what it needs to administer its own sex-education programs.
“We don’t have the staff to do a lot of things we’d like to do in Arkansas,” Barham said. He said the biggest need is for people who will teach teens.
Some groups that already include contraception in their sex-education courses say the federal money will give them new opportunities to reach teenagers.
Planned Parenthood of Arkansas and Eastern Oklahoma helped Little Rock community groups start a pilot program five years ago to teach comprehensive sex-education classes.
Planned Parenthood was not eligible for the state-based abstinence-only grants because it taught about contraception. The group has only one educator to teach middle and high school health classes in the Little Rock School District and to youth groups around the area.
Educator Karen Swinton said Planned Parenthood could expand if they receive a grant.
“I try to get to as many schools as I can, but it’s limited," Swinton said.
Information for this article was contributed by Cynthia Howell of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 08/15/2010