California's State Board of Education has adopted new sex education standards for public schools. Officials say students will first learn about Sex Ed in the fifth grade. KPBS reporter Ana Tintocalis has the story.
The state passed a law four years ago that banned “abstinence-only” programs in public schools. The new sex education standards uphold that law by spelling out what students learn in each grade.
For example, fifth graders will learn about sexually transmitted diseases; middle school kids will learn about the physical and mental anguish of sexual assaults; high school teens will learn about the morning-after pill and condoms.
Planned Parenthood's Vince Hall likes the new curriculum's holistic approach.
Hall : It focuses not just on sexuality as a single item but it discusses healthy relationships, it discusses dealing with alcohol and drug abuse, and it talks about the ways all of those different challenges for our young people are interconnected.
Conservative groups say this is too much information too soon.
Ana Tintocalis, KPBS News.
