Indiana parents demand answers over sex education curriculum

Indiana parents, due to their experiences monitoring their children during virtual and remote classes during the coronavirus pandemic, are demanding accountability and transparency when it comes to their school districts and sex education curriculum.

Fox 59 News in Indiana reported that school boards are withering under criticism from concerned parents about their school districts’ sex education curriculum.

In Hamilton County, which covers some of the northern suburbs of Indianapolis, school boards in Carmel or in nearby Fishers are under fire for the content of their sex education curriculum. Other cities and towns in Indiana, whose school boards are facing parents’ ire, are Avon, Danville, Brownsburg, Greenfield, and Greenwood. Many of these towns and cities are in the Indianapolis metropolitan area.

Parents, after checking the content of their children’s sex education curriculum, objected to some of the content. By Indiana state law, all schools must teach abstinence outside of marriage as a part of the sex education curriculum. However, several parents told Fox 59 that while some districts follow the state law, others “teach other various sexual behavior as an alternative” at K-12 levels.

Indiana is one of forty-three states which has an exemption to the obscenity code, which says that distributing obscenity and pornography to minors is illegal. The exemption allows some material to be in school libraries or classrooms as long as it is a part of an education curriculum. Outside of the education curriculum, these materials are considered a crime.

Several school districts responded to inquiries about their sex education curriculum and growing concerns about its content.

Noblesville’s school district noted that parents can review and choose to opt out of the sex education curriculum, and they claim that they use a “comprehensive process” to review and evaluate materials. The district encourages “parents who have concerns about specific library materials to contact their library media specialist and/or principal.”

The Center Grove district said they “are in a continual review process… as appropriateness should be reviewed not only by reading level but also for students’ age and maturity.”

Hamilton Southeastern Schools outlined its standards for sex education, which falls under its “Health and Wellness education” and appeared to reiterate that the curriculum follows a set of standards.

Parents were complacent about public education and their children’s learning, but have awoken to concerning material due to monitoring their children’s classes at home. Whether it is sex education curriculum or Critical Race Theory, parents are taking action to hold their local education bureaucrats accountable.

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