Indian Prairie District 204 says it's keeping health and sex ed classes the same this year

While state standards for health and sex education underwent changes after recent legislation, Indian Prairie Unit 204 officials say students and parents won't see any changes in district classrooms this school year.

Deputy Superintendent Doug Eccarius and Director of Elective Curriculum Grant Sahr detailed the district's ongoing approach to health and sex education at Monday's school board meeting.

They told board members certain standards remain vague and require clarification. With that in mind, and because district schools already are meeting most of the standards, the curriculum from previous years remains in place.

That includes the opportunity for parents to have their children opt out of sex education.

District 204 is the state's fourth-largest school district. Its schools serve 26,000 students in Aurora, Bolingbrook, Naperville and Plainfield.

“In Illinois, one of the challenges is you have K-8 districts, you have high school districts, you have unit districts,” Eccarius said. “It's definitely a challenge for unit districts to interpret what they're suggesting with the new mandates.”

Eccarius said that after Illinois legislators last year passed Public Act 102-0522 and the Keeping Youth Safe and Healthy Act, school districts with comprehensive sexual health education plans became required to adopt standards-based courses for grades six through 12.

In July, the Illinois State Board of Education adopted the national sex education standards that went into effect immediately.

Among the changing topic strands within the standards, consent has been added to the topic of healthy relationships. And identity has been split into separate topics for gender identity and expression, and sexual orientation and identity.

Based on current practices within District 204, though, Sahr said the bulk of the standards already are represented at district schools, including all seven topic strands listed for high school courses.

There may be future changes based on the clarifications sought by district officials, but, they stressed, this school year remains status quo.

“This is pretty late in the phase to try to make changes for this school year,” Eccarius said. “There's quite a bit of clarification we would still like to have on this topic.”