The Gloucester schools' working document regarding a new policy on sex education, the distribution of birth control and providing free day-care facilities for the teen moms who are students at Gloucester High School has a lot going for it.
The draft policy, outlined earlier this week by Superintendent of Schools Christopher Farmer, proposes a sex-education program designed to teach both abstinence and the effective use of contraceptives. It calls for continuing to maintain the day-care center in the high school. It would offer students and parents three options regarding the distribution of birth control from the GHS health clinic. And — perhaps most importantly — it provides at least a working document for the embarrassingly overdue first and only public hearing on such a policy, or any other issues regarding Gloucester's now-infamous spike in pregnancies during the last school year.
But the missing link behind the draft policy remains the fact that, six months after school officials first publicly discussed the rise in pregnancies, some of them were apparently intentional — and three months after a Time magazine report of an alleged but never confirmed "pregnancy pact" among some of the students put Gloucester on the global media scope — none of the policy has been vetted through any community input. Because of that, the School Committee must be sure to venture into next Wednesday night's public hearing at City Hall with the sense that this draft policy is still little more than a first step. And committee members must indeed keep their ears open to a skeptical public that has every reason to feel it's been frozen out of any public debate on this issue, or having any say on what should be a community-based decision.
The policy, as drafted, seems to be a good one. That's especially true when it comes to the most sensitive issue — allowing the school health clinic, administered by Addison Gilbert Hospital and its parent Northeast Health System, to distribute contraceptives to GHS students — where it gives parents the choice as to whether they want their son or daughter to be eligible for those services without their consent, with their consent only, or not at all.
In many ways, those choices and other aspects of the draft policy follow the course outlined by the so-called "Blue Ribbon panel" of state and other health-care experts who presented their recommendations to the School Committee in July. Similarly, other aspects of the draft follow that panel's recommendations as well. That's fine — again, as long as committee members are open to hearing from residents who attend Wednesday night's hearing.
But committee members should excuse residents if they wonder about their true level of input, especially when it comes to the day-care facility, which is run by Pathways for Children. For the School Committee has already approved "changes" in the policy for running that facility at a meeting earlier this month — despite the fact that there was never any public input at all.
Will the School Committee change its collective mind and perhaps require the day-care center to be at the nearby Pathways site, if there is a public hearing consensus that it should not be in the school? That's just one in a minefield of questions surrounding the legitimacy of having a public hearing on a significant school policy package nearly a month after the school year began — and three weeks after an important part of that policy has already been approved by the committee,
Yes, there are a lot of strong aspects of this draft policy, which should address a number of parents' and community concerns. But while the experts have weighed in, and both the superintendent and School Committee have provided a very good starting point, school officials must recognize that the most important input — that of the community itself — is still to come. And it had better give proper weight to the voices heard when residents finally get their chance to speak next Wednesday night — even if it means changing course.
The draft policy — combined with the School Committee premature day-care center approval — may seem like a done deal. It had better not be — and residents will be watching as well as speaking out and listening next Wednesday night.
