Parents press board to cancel sex survey (Virginia)

Mr Jefferson is dead. The idea was a bad one in retrospect.

It seems like a good time to mention Separation of School and State, but since it won't happen in my lifetime, we'll do the best we can with what we have to work with.

Sex survey found legal
(Fairfax-AP) A survey asking Fairfax County high school students about their sexual experience has been deemed legal.
The Board of Supervisors asked the county attorney last week to determine if the 169-question survey, including nine questions on sexual behavior violates federal law. County attorney David Bobzien says it doesn't violate a law that states no student should be required to submit to a survey about sex behavior and attitudes without parental consent.
Bobzien tells The Washington Times the survey is a local initiative and doesn't use any federal funds. Bobzien adds parents or students can opt out if they wish.
The school board is expected to vote this Thursday on whether to approve the survey as is or to take out the questions about sexual conduct.
WMAL

I caught a little bit of the school board meeting last night on cable. Domenech was stressing the opt-out provision of the survey, making it virtually meaningless if it's real scientific data they're after. But we all know better. More school news

School administrators in the Washington area yesterday stepped up preparations for possible terrorism, and most school districts told parents that they would be prevented, or strongly discouraged, from picking up their children in the event of a biological or chemical attack.
In Fairfax County, Superintendent of Schools Daniel A. Domenech told the School Board last night that he would deploy more security forces around schools, limit parking near buildings and cancel outdoor activities and field trips if the nation's terrorist alert were raised to its highest level, Code Red. He said he also would consider closing schools.
Loudoun County school officials yesterday added a "shelter-in-place" plan against chemical attacks to their usual emergency procedures. Schools would be locked down and signs posted on the doors in Spanish and English saying that nobody would be allowed to enter or exit. WP

Mrs. Ridge promotes survey on sex and drugs:

http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030218-132803.htm

District attorney says informed parental consent not needed.

Maybe the law in VA has to be changed.

Thanks for the link. I'm going to post the entire article because the WT only keeps their articles on their server for just a few days or weeks. People from other states like Mrs. Ridge really have no business involving themselves in local matters.

Mrs. Ridge promotes survey on sex, drugs
By George Archibald
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
A Fairfax County schools survey that asks teens if they perform oral sex, use drugs or ever have considered suicide is part of a national grant-harvesting program promoted by Michele Ridge, wife of President Bush's director of homeland security.
Mrs. Ridge is the hired national spokeswoman for Communities That Care (CTC), which developed the youth survey used in more than 400 communities nationwide to collect personal information from students to help local governments justify federal and foundation grant applications, said Michael G. Bete, president of Channing Bete Co., a Massachusetts firm that devised the data-gathering program.
Millions of dollars worth of grants gained through CTC fund community programs that fight drug abuse, delinquency and sexual diseases, he said.
"We collect primary data from students self-reporting" about drug use, sexual activity and family matters, Mr. Bete said in an interview. "Based on their own unique data, we help communities develop a prevention plan that leads them to choose proven and existing programs" to reduce youth delinquency and anti-social behavior.
A public outcry over the 169-question school survey to be administered to Fairfax County sophomores and seniors in April erupted last month, after parents objected to its explicit sexual questions.
The county's 15- to 18-year-old high school students will be asked: "How old were you when you first had sex?" "Have you ever had oral sex?" "The last time you had sexual intercourse, what one method did you or your partner use to prevent pregnancy?"
Parents objected to the survey as an invasion of privacy. The federal Family Privacy Protection Act of 1996 requires schools using federal funds to get written parental consent before administering any survey or test to anyone younger than 18 involving issues of sexuality, personal health, family matters, and political views or affiliations.
Fairfax County Attorney David Bobzien ruled last week that no federal funds are involved in the survey and that it is a local initiative not requiring informed parental consent.
Students are not required to participate in the survey and can "opt out," he said.
The county School Board voted Thursday 8-4 along party lines — Democrats favoring and Republicans opposing — to allow the survey to be administered.
Phyllis Schlafly, leader of the pro-family Eagle Forum in Clayton, Mo., a suburb of St. Louis, says "nosey questionnaires" in schools, which members of her group have fought for almost 20 years, are "a total fraud."
Mrs. Schlafly said the surveys have done nothing to stop the increase of drug use, sexual permissiveness and violence among youths.
"We already know there's a drug problem. All you have to do is turn on the TV," she said in an interview. "Whether it's 55 percent or 58 percent makes no difference."
Mrs. Schlafly called the surveys "completely unreliable. A lot of the kids think it's a big joke and they give phony answers." Similar school surveys produced by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the University of Michigan and a private company called Search Institute in Minneapolis have outraged parents in many states with explicit personal questions, she said.
"The suicide questions are most devastating: 'Tell us all the things that would make you want to kill yourself.' Isn't that an awful thing to ask a child?" she said.
Parents in Ridgewood, N.J., have a pending federal lawsuit against a 156-question Search Institute survey called "Profiles of Student Life: Attitudes and Behaviors," which asked students to disclose how many times they had used LSD in the past 12 months, "stolen something from a store" or "damaged property just for fun."
The New Jersey Legislature responded to the lawsuit last year by passing a Protection of Pupil Rights Act, which required schools to obtain informed written parental consent before giving students surveys or tests that asked about sexual, family, medical, financial or political information.
Nonetheless, the Ridgewood plaintiffs last month filed a second lawsuit against their public school district after a 55-question survey was given to seventh- and eighth-grade students, asking about alcohol and illegal drug use, sexual activity and anti-social behavior. The lawsuit charges that students at George Washington Middle School were made to write their names on the survey and submit it for class credit, without prior parental knowledge or consent.
Mr. Bete said CTC surveys are "strictly anonymous" and that no results are reported back "of any subgroups less than 50" to assure anonymity.
He said it is necessary for community schools, on behalf of social service, health and law-enforcement agencies, to collect firsthand views of teens about their sexual attitudes and behavior; the availability of drugs and firearms; problem behavior among students; their parents' attitudes and family history of problem behavior and conflicts.
"Communities are tackling problems that are truly there and existing [rather than] run the risk of being an ostrich and not tackling them," he said. Survey results allow community leaders to "look at protective factors and risk factors" and develop "a focused, long-range community action plan for building on existing resources [to develop] healthy beliefs, clear standards, and healthy behaviors" for children and youths.
The company helps clients file applications for scores of grant programs in the federal departments of Health and Human Services, Justice, Education, and private foundations, he said. "A grant application will be easier to write and will be much more compelling because they've done their homework," Mr. Bete said.
The company's Web site says local agencies in Fremont, Colo., "generated $2.4 million in new funding as a direct result of their CTC strategic plan." New York state's program to reduce marijuana and other drug use by 12- to 17-year-olds has generated $3 million in state funds and $700,000 in federal funds for 14 communities with the CTC plan, said the promotional packet.
The program brought a $349,000 federal grant for the DeKalb County, Ga., juvenile court and $1.1 million from the Department of Labor for the county's youth offender program.
Mrs. Ridge and her husband, former Gov. Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania, now director of the newly formed federal Department of Homeland Security, "became believers in Communities That Care back in their tenure" in Harrisburg as governor and first lady, Mr. Bete said. "They installed it in 120 different communities in Pennsylvania alone."
The South Deerfield, Mass., company's publications promote sexual abstinence for teens, warning: "It's your life on the line. Every hour, two people under 20 get HIV ... just in the U.S."
Mrs. Ridge praises the Channing Bete program as "a perfect platform for allowing communities to come together in an objective, scientific way — without finger-pointing. It's a truly bipartisan, apolitical process that results in better, healthier communities that help children grow up with more hope, more opportunity, and better outcomes."
Mrs. Ridge did not respond to interview requests, and the Channing Bete Co. could not describe how she might use her influence with the Bush administration to obtain federal grants for local government agencies enrolled in the CTC program.
Mrs. Ridge is pictured prominently and quoted in the company's promotional literature. The CTC program was developed by two University of Washington social development professors, who conducted a $1 million survey of 9,000 Seattle middle and high school students in 2000.
The Seattle Times said the survey concluded that youth "risk factors include uninvolved parents who don't stress the importance of school; don't enforce rules; and don't know where and with whom their kids are hanging out."
Channing Bete bought rights to the program in 2000 and hired Mrs. Ridge as national spokeswoman. In April, first lady Laura Bush publicly honored Mrs. Ridge in Hershey, Pa., for her youth nonviolence efforts. The following month, Mr. Bush appointed Mrs. Ridge to the board of directors of the federal Student Loan Marketing Association.
WT

washingtonpost.com

Fairfax Cancels Student Survey on Sex, Drugs
Company Distributing the Questionnaire Feared Angry Parents Might File Lawsuits

By S. Mitra Kalita
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 23, 2003; Page B08

A controversial survey asking Fairfax County students about their experiences with alcohol, drugs and sex has been canceled because the company hired to administer it feared that parents might sue.

The wide-ranging survey was to be distributed next week to 10,000 randomly chosen students in sixth, eighth, 10th and 12th grades to gauge levels of risky behavior among Fairfax County youth.

But Channing Bete Co., a Massachusetts-based publishing and survey company, asked the county to absolve it of any potential legal risk -- and county attorneys say Virginia law makes that impossible.

The survey, hotly protested by many parents, included more than 100 questions on such topics as smoking, suicide, weight loss and family relationships. Participation was to be voluntary, and the questions about sexual behaviorwere to be asked only of sophomores and seniors. continue

Apr 23, 2003
Student sex survey canceled

FAIRFAX, Va. (AP) _ A survey asking Fairfax County students about their experiences with drugs, alcohol and sex has been canceled because the company hired to administer the survey feared that parents might sue.
The survey, intended to gauge levels of risky behavior among Fairfax youth, was scheduled to be distributed next week to 10,000 randomly chosen students in sixth, 10th and 12th grades.
But Channing Bete Co., a Massachusetts survey and publishing company, asked the county to absolve it of any potential legal risk, and county attorneys say Virginia law makes that impossible.
Participation in the survey, which has been protested by parents, was to be voluntary. Question topics were to include smoking, suicide and family relationships. The questions about sexual behavior, added for the first time this year, were only to be on surveys handed out to sophomores and seniors.
The sex questions included: "How old were you when you first had sex?" and "Have you ever had oral sex?"
Michael Bete, president of Channing Bete, said the firm does not usually ask questions about students' sexual behavior. Fairfax officials had asked for the questions on sex as an important indicator of risky behavior among the county's teens.
Fairfax County officials use the survey to develop health curriculums and apply for grants, and they said they tried to persuade the company not to withdraw.
"We would have agreed to cover them if there was something in our error, such as accidentally distributing a test to the wrong student," said Karen Harwood, deputy attorney for Fairfax County. "But it was a business decision on their part."
A similar survey in northern New Jersey prompted parents to sue the company that administered the questionnaires without their permission. New Jersey now requires parental consent before students take tests or surveys that ask for family, medical, financial or political information.

RTD

April 24, 2003

Fairfax pulls the plug on sex survey
By Jon Ward
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Fairfax County schools have canceled a survey that would have asked, among other things, questions about students' sexual behavior, because the company contracted to administer it feared it would be sued.

The 169-question survey was scheduled to be given to 10,000 randomly selected students in grades six, eight, 10 and 12 next week. The company wanted the county to release it from liability, but county attorneys said state law would not allow the county to do that.

"We didn't have an issue with the content — the handful of sex questions that were added by Fairfax County. We just made a business decision that we couldn't take a legal risk," said Daniel Carmody, vice president of Channing Bete, a Massachusetts-based publishing and survey company.

"The survey is a voluntary survey. But we can't control if a particular teacher gives students the impression that they have to answer the survey, then a parent gets upset. We can't assume responsibility for that," he said. "Fairfax was not able to share responsibility, and we basically came to an impasse."

The survey would have been a follow-up to one that was given to students in 2001, which did not ask students about their sexual behavior.

Channing Bete has not been sued over its "Communities That Care" (CTC) surveys. But three parents in Ridgewood, N.J., have filed two lawsuits against their local school system, saying two different surveys violated their children's privacy.

Last year, the New Jersey state legislature responded to one of the lawsuits by passing a Protection of Pupil Rights Act, which requires schools to get written parental consent before administering surveys or tests that ask students about their experiences with sex and about their family, medical, financial or political information.

Channing Bete supplies the CTC survey to more than 400 communities nationwide.

Fairfax County added nine questions about sexual behavior, which only would have been asked of 10th and 12th grade students. Results of the survey are increasingly crucial to getting grant money for programs, said Mary Shaughnessy, county student-services director.

Millions of dollars worth of grants fund community programs that fight drug abuse, delinquency and sexually transmitted diseases. Michele Ridge, the wife of President Bush's director of Homeland Security, is the national spokeswoman for the CTC program.

Mrs. Shaughnessy said the questions about sexual behavior were tacked on to the CTC survey because county health and school officials wanted to find out what areas of sex education they needed to improve.

The questions met resistance on the School Board and on the county Board of Supervisors, which was funding the $60,000 survey.

The questions would have asked students whether they had engaged in sex, how old they were when they first did so, how many partners they have had, whether drugs and alcohol were involved and whether protection was used. Two questions about oral sex also were included.

Board of Supervisors member Stuart Mendelsohn, Dranesville Republican, tried to stop the survey last January and have the questions about sex removed. The board voted 7-3 to keep the questions.

At-large School Board member Mychele B. Brickner wanted the board to reject the questions. But last February, the board voted 8-4 to include them on the survey.

Mr. Mendelsohn, who is a lawyer, said he was surprised by Channing Bete's actions. "I didn't expect the contractor to pull the plug. But did I think there was a risk of a lawsuit? Yes," he said. "It's too bad they lost the whole survey over a few questions that, in my opinion, should never have been asked."

Mrs. Brickner agreed. "The survey was fine the way it was delivered two years ago. It gave us valuable information. But when we get into this type of questioning, it's gone too far," she said.

Mrs. Shaughnessy said Fairfax County schools are thinking about using a survey conducted by the state. That survey, which would be administered next year, would likely not include questions about sexual behavior.

http://www.washtimes.com/metro/20030424-20987906.htm