|
(At my charter school, filled with voucher-waving kids, this won't be a problem)
Group gives schools 'F' on condom availability
BY ELLEN YAN
STAFF WRITER
November 4, 2005
Students have problems getting condoms and health advice at NYC high schools, where the health curriculum fails to reflect updated lessons on AIDS, a community nonprofit said Thursday.
The Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization Project has sent out more than 60 student activists on a "Find the Condom In Your Schools" campaign, asking them and their recruits to request condoms from staff and survey peers on condom accessibility. The results are to be released later this month.
"If you spend most of your time at school, I think that's where the condoms should be," said Bailey Ramos, one of the campaign's activists and a sophomore at Martin Luther King Jr. High School for Arts and Technology. "If you go to the store in your neighborhood, you're afraid of your parents finding out or 'What if they tell this person?'"
In the last 18 months, the majority of high schools -- 212 out of about 380 -- did not order condoms and schools that did got a total of 320 boxes, each with 1,000 condoms, according to the Department of Education's response to a Freedom of Information request filed on behalf of the nonprofit.
Sarah Howell, the nonprofit's program coordinator, said that translates to 1.4 condoms per sexually active student, a "drastic and dangerous shortage." (According to a federal 2003 survey, 48 percent of city high school students are sexually active.)
"Students don't have the tools they need to have to protect themselves from HIV and sexually transmitted diseases," Howell said. "New York City has historically been a focal point of the AIDS epidemic, and what that means is that the Department of Ed and the city has a huge responsibility to students."
Education officials said the group's calculations do not take into account the condoms ordered more than 18 months ago. Condoms have expiration dates but the shelf life of an average one is about five years.
DOE officials said schools carry condoms as needed because the chancellor's regulations from 1981 require schools to give out condoms upon request, unless the student's parents chose to opt out of this service.
|