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ACLU of New Mexico Cries Foul Over Rio Rancho Abstinence-Only Sex Education Policy (2/27/2007)
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: media@aclu.org
RIO RANCHO, NM -
The American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico raised objections on Tuesday to
the participation of Rio Rancho School Board member Kathy Jackson in a January
22 vote not to offer alternatives to the district’s abstinence-only sex
education curriculum. According to the New Mexico Secretary of State
Office website, Jackson currently is a registered lobbyist for Best Choices
Educational Services, Inc., the organization that contracts with the district to
provide abstinence-only teaching. Jackson’s husband and Rio Rancho Mayor
Keith Jackson also lobbies for Best Choices.
“There is an
appearance of impropriety when a school board member votes for a policy that is
going to benefit the corporation for which she works,” said ACLU Executive
Director Peter Simonson. “When Jackson cast that vote, was she thinking
like a school board member or like a lobbyist? Whose interests was she
intending to serve? The citizens of Rio Rancho deserve to know when
factors like this might be motivating the vote of a school board member,
especially on such a sensitive issue as sex education.”
According
to the ACLU, the school board decision is especially momentous because it
rejects a requirement by the New Mexico Department of Public Education to offer
a comprehensive curriculum when teaching secondary students about sex
education.
The board’s vote also rejected recommendations by
the district’s School Health Advisory Council, made up of 25 to 30 principals,
nurses, counselors, parents and teachers. The ACLU is investigating legal
strategies to challenge the board decision.
“The school board could
have voted to give families options about the kind of sex education their
children receive. Instead they voted to prescribe certain teachings based
on a narrow set of moral assumptions that not all of the families in Rio Rancho
share. Now we see that their vote may have been imprudent as well as
dismissive of the diversity in Rio Rancho,” said Simonson.
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