• Human Growth and Development Updates for 2018-2019

    Parent Education Update:

    Please join us for a parent education event, “How to Talk With Your Child About Sexuality and Relationships” presented by Heidi Winig, from BACHE/Cardea Services.  

    Sign up here.  

    January 22, 2019, from 6:30-8:00 pm at Cupertino Middle School - Event Center

    January 23, 2019, from 9:00-10:30 am at Cupertino Middle School - Bernardo Gym

     

    Grade 7 Update 

    Letter to 7th Grade Parents December 2018

    Slides from Parent Information Sessions

    Cupertino Union School District middle schools will be providing comprehensive sexual health education to 7th-grade students using the Positive Prevention Plus program. Your student’s science teacher will provide this instruction and lessons are scheduled for May and June. 

    Below is a video of a Parent Information Session held in Dec/Jan, which covered what your child will be taught in the classroom including 

    • Understand how lessons connect to the California Healthy Youth Act
    • Examine written instructional materials
    • Learn tools for supporting your child’s learning at home

    The California Healthy Youth Act requires that comprehensive sexual health education and HIV prevention education be provided to students at least once in middle school or junior high school and once in high school, starting in grade 7.  Per the California Healthy Youth Act, instruction must be medically accurate, age‐appropriate and inclusive of all students, and must encourage students to communicate with parents, guardians or other trusted adults about human sexuality.

    If you have questions, please reach out to your child’s 7th-grade science teacher or the school principal.

    Grade 5 Update 

    The Board of Trustees provided feedback on our timeline and process for selecting an updated Human Growth and Development curriculum for Grade 5. To see details shared at the Board meeting, please review these slides or view the video here.

    For more information about our timeline and process, including the various curricula we will review, please read more here.

    In December, we assembled a Task Force to review options and recommend materials for piloting in all 5th-grade classrooms this spring.

    Meeting Materials

    Folder of Task Force Materials for December 3, 2018, and form to provide feedback.

    Opportunities to Get Involved and Stay Connected with the Task Force:

    • Review the meeting agendas and minutes provided in the folder above. We’ll add a new folder for each meeting.
    • Parents/guardians and staff had an opportunity to provide feedback to the Task Force before we started, and we will continue to invite feedback as we post meeting materials following each meeting.
    • View the curriculum options that the Task Force is considering and provide feedback before recommendations are presented to the Board.  Sign-ups closed in early December. Please contact Dana Ino if you are interested in attending.
    • Attend a Parent Education/Information Session: Once we determine the various curricula that will be piloted this spring, we will offer sessions to help parents/guardians know what will be taught and how to support conversations at home. Details and opportunities to sign up will follow as we determine plans for piloting the curriculum.

    Opt-Out for Grade 5 or Grade 7

    Parents have the right to opt-out of specific Human Growth and Development lessons or the entire unit for their child. School districts must allow parents to remove their student from instruction if they so choose, using a passive consent (“opt‐out”) process in which parents must request in writing that their student not receive the instruction. Districts may not require active consent (“opt‐in”) by requiring that students return a permission slip in order to receive the instruction.

    Parents interested in opting out of this curriculum would do so following the receipt of the parent notification letter from their middle school.

    Parents may opt out of specific days/lesson and students will be provided with another educational opportunity outside of the classroom on those day(s).  However, discussions of those topics may occur during later lessons or during classroom discussion. Students would not be excused for these types of discussions; therefore, if parents wish to completely exclude any discussion or conversation about those topics, they should opt out of all subsequent lessons as well.

    As we prepare for teaching, we will provide information on how to choose the opt-out option.

    Additional Resources for Parents

    Health Connected Family Talk  is a program for parents/caregivers and their kids to start important conversations about puberty, etc.

    Amaze.org has great videos for parents and provides models for how to talk with your kids about topics within sexuality.


    Stanford’s Heart to Heart: This informative, humorous, and lively discussion of puberty, the opposite sex and growing up, sets parents and their pre-teens (aged 10-12) on a course for talking with one another about these topics. An emphasis in the “For Girls” and “For Boys” programs are on communication and the importance of family as the primary resource.