Editor-in-Chief: Matt Meyer, Assistant Editor: Katie Gaspers, News Editor: Sinjon Ruesch, Opinion Editor: Jake Dunn, Feature Editor: Amy Saville, Sports Editor: Justin McDonald, Entertainment Editor: Alison Johnston, Business Manager: Reese Irwin, Reporters: Mary Taggart, Rachel Hatfield, Danny Menig, Jess Neary, Bonnie Saville, Matte Spomer, Gigi Hoagland, Karen Madrid, and Laurisa Grimm, Adviser: Vin Cappiello

Second semester health students were the first to experience changes that are in store for the CHS health curriculum.

Health classes were segregated by gender this year for the one-day lesson on contraceptives.

“[The class] wasn’t even anything crazy,” sophomore Jack Schmidt said. “I think it was blown totally out of proportion.”

The decision to separate the class came from the School Board. A task force also was appointed to study the health curriculum and make a recommendation to the School Board on how the classes should be taught.

“We are trying to get good information to form an idea [for the recommendation],” task force member sophomore Katrina Pasek said.

Since March the task force has met six times for a total 12.5 hours to discuss and study the issues. The group looked at several sources of information including: the Wyoming Health Curriculum Content and Performance Standards, benchmarks and performance descriptions, the CHS health curriculum syllabus, course map and assessment blueprints and the Youth Risk Behavior survey results.

“[Task force organizer] Mrs. [Betsy] Sell gets us packets every meeting that are generally unbiased,” Pasek said.  “We got information from five other schools in the state. We talked about what other schools are doing.”

While the task forc discussed the curriculum the health teachers already had begun to change their classes.

“For the entire unit Mr. Hellman and I wanted to make sure we teach mostly the same things,” health teacher Mrs. Patty Brus said. “We wanted to make sure both of us did a presentation on dating violence and both of us did a presentation on child support.”

The major difference this year was the separation of the classes for the contraceptive unit and the lack a Northwest Family Planning presentation.

“[The class] only involved one lesson on contraceptives,” Brus said. “It taught exactly the same presentation as a speaker from Northwest Family Planning. There really wasn’t anything the girls wouldn’t have asked with the boys sitting there.”

The task force held its final meeting May 11 wherein it prepared to make a recommendation to the School Board on whether health classes should continue to be segregated and what should be included in the curriculum for next year.

Student sex ed response negative

Amy Saville

EQUUS PHOTO/ Sinjon Ruesch