DCPS considering splitting certain health classes by gender
The Duval County school board is moving forward with changes to its health classes and sex education policy, including possibly splitting up health glasses for students from 6th-8th grade by their gender.
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The district's policy handbook review committee went over the change along with a list of other curriculum changes during its meeting on Wednesday, which included changes to how sex education is taught in schools.
One of the board members brought up a concern over how exactly health classes would be split up, should the policy change end up getting approved. It was over the new policy not mentioning, specifically, how students who identify as male, female or nonbinary would be placed between health classes.
'How are we looking at whether female will be comfortable with a male saying 'hey I'm a female,' and vice versa?' the board member asked.
Superintendent Dr. Christopher Bernier took the question, saying, firstly, that classes would be split for students by the gender assigned to them at birth, lining up with the Florida law allowing health classes to be taught by gender.
He added any parents uncomfortable with the changing of classes would have the chance to opt-out. The school board said parents would be made aware of any changes to their student's health classes both with a physical paper and electronically.
Last month, Action News Jax told you about the school board's consideration of changing the way sex education is taught in schools, which was also included in the policy changes brought up in Wednesday's meeting. Board members shared concerns they received from parents that the policy sets abstinence, or saving sex until marriage, as a standard for the district, which is already the standard in Florida, but doesn't mention teaching about ways to prevent pregnancies.
'It has been scaled back, limited information that is provided on contraceptives. We don't particularly talk about condoms like we have in the past,' one of the district officials said in response to the concerns.
It's worth noting the policy surrounding sex education changes does mention it will teach students about 'ways to control the spread' of sexually transmitted diseases, like AIDS. The policy also would reserve education on STDs for students in grades 6-12.
The school board still needs to make a final approval of these changes before they can happen. The next chance of this happening is in the next school board meeting, which is set for April 1st.
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Politico
2 hours ago
- Politico
Is Rubio's PEPFAR claim ‘made up'?
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Yahoo
5 hours ago
- Yahoo
‘It's made up': Democrats say Rubio isn't playing it straight about foreign aid cuts
Democrats are accusing the Trump administration of lying about the state of America's top global health program following massive cuts to foreign aid led by Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency. The administration has cut more than a hundred contracts and grants from the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, the HIV and AIDS program credited with saving millions of lives in poor countries. President Donald Trump has shut down the agency that signed off on most PEPFAR spending and fired other staffers who supported it. But Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggested Democrats' concerns are overblown, considering that PEPFAR remains '85 percent operative.' Rubio has made the claim repeatedly in budget testimony before Congress, but neither he nor the State Department will provide a detailed accounting to back up the figure. For flummoxed Democrats, it indicates a broader problem: How to respond to Trump's budget requests when his administration refuses to spend the money Congress has provided. Trump last month asked Congress to cut PEPFAR's budget for next year by 40 percent. 'It's made up,' Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz said when asked by POLITICO about the 85 percent figure. 'It's the most successful, bipartisan, highly efficient life-saving thing that the United States has ever done and Elon Musk went in and trashed it.' Schatz confronted Rubio about the cuts at a Foreign Relations Committee hearing in May, telling him: 'You are required to spend 100 percent of the money.' Rubio said the 15 percent cut targeted programs that weren't delivering the services the government was paying for. He pointed to fraud in Namibia and armed conflict in Sudan as reasons for slashed funding, although it isn't clear those instances were related to PEPFAR. 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In addition to shutting down USAID, the agency that dispensed and monitored much of that funding, the administration fired experts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's global health division who worked on the program, including those specializing in maternal and child HIV. 'I'm not sure where he got these numbers,' Delaware Sen. Chris Coons, a senior Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, said of Rubio's 85 percent claim. The lack of clarity has angered HIV activists, who protested against the PEPFAR cuts during the budget hearings where Rubio testified. 'It's unconscionable and alarming to know that 130 days into this administration, Rubio has overseen the completely unnecessary decimation of life-saving services to millions of people, then lying about that fact over and over again,' said Asia Russell, executive director of Health GAP, a nonprofit working on access to HIV treatment in developing countries. 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Politico
6 hours ago
- Politico
‘It's made up': Democrats say Rubio isn't playing it straight about foreign aid cuts
Democrats are accusing the Trump administration of lying about the state of America's top global health program following massive cuts to foreign aid led by Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency. The administration has cut more than a hundred contracts and grants from the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, the HIV and AIDS program credited with saving millions of lives in poor countries. President Donald Trump has shut down the agency that signed off on most PEPFAR spending and fired other staffers who supported it. But Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggested Democrats' concerns are overblown, considering that PEPFAR remains '85 percent operative.' Rubio has made the claim repeatedly in budget testimony before Congress, but neither he nor the State Department will provide a detailed accounting to back up the figure. For flummoxed Democrats, it indicates a broader problem: How to respond to Trump's budget requests when his administration refuses to spend the money Congress has provided. Trump last month asked Congress to cut PEPFAR's budget for next year by 40 percent. 'It's made up,' Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz said when asked by POLITICO about the 85 percent figure. 'It's the most successful, bipartisan, highly efficient life-saving thing that the United States has ever done and Elon Musk went in and trashed it.' Schatz confronted Rubio about the cuts at a Foreign Relations Committee hearing in May, telling him: 'You are required to spend 100 percent of the money.' Rubio said the 15 percent cut targeted programs that weren't delivering the services the government was paying for. He pointed to fraud in Namibia and armed conflict in Sudan as reasons for slashed funding, although it isn't clear those instances were related to PEPFAR. Asked repeatedly by POLITICO for more clarity on what the 85 percent figure represents, a State Department spokesperson said that 'PEPFAR-funded programs that deliver HIV care and treatment or prevention of mother to child transmission services are operational for a majority of beneficiaries.' Data collection is ongoing to capture recent updates to programming, the spokesperson also said, adding: 'We expect to have updated figures later this year.' The day after his exchange with Schatz, Rubio told the House Foreign Affairs Committee that he meant 85 percent of PEPFAR's beneficiaries were still getting U.S. assistance. But the goal, he said, was to pass off all of the work to the countries where the beneficiaries live. 'We're by far the most generous nation on Earth on foreign aid, and will continue to be by far with no other equal, including China, despite all this alarmist stuff,' he said. People who worked on implementing PEPFAR, both inside and outside the government, as well as advocates for HIV prevention and care, are alarmed nonetheless. A State Department report from the month before Trump took office underscores the breadth of its services. In fiscal 2024, the report says, PEPFAR provided medication to 20.6 million people, including 566,000 children, HIV prevention services to 2.3 million girls and women, and testing for 83.8 million. After DOGE dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development in February, several recipients of PEPFAR grants and contracts said they'd had to lay off staff even as Rubio insisted that life-saving aid was continuing. Rubio's skeptics point to the Trump administration's cancellation of more than 100 HIV grants and contracts, representing about 20 percent of PEPFAR's total budget, according to an analysis by the Center for Global Development, an anti-poverty group. In addition to shutting down USAID, the agency that dispensed and monitored much of that funding, the administration fired experts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's global health division who worked on the program, including those specializing in maternal and child HIV. 'I'm not sure where he got these numbers,' Delaware Sen. Chris Coons, a senior Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, said of Rubio's 85 percent claim. The lack of clarity has angered HIV activists, who protested against the PEPFAR cuts during the budget hearings where Rubio testified. 'It's unconscionable and alarming to know that 130 days into this administration, Rubio has overseen the completely unnecessary decimation of life-saving services to millions of people, then lying about that fact over and over again,' said Asia Russell, executive director of Health GAP, a nonprofit working on access to HIV treatment in developing countries. Russell was among those arrested for disrupting Rubio's House Foreign Affairs hearing. The confusion around how much of America's celebrated global health program is still operational adds to the uncertainty about the Trump administration's spending plans for the funds Congress appropriated for 2025. And it comes as Congress gears up to consider the president's 2026 budget request. Last month, Trump asked Congress to reduce the PEPFAR budget from $4.8 billion this year to $2.9 billion next. And on Tuesday, the White House asked Congress to claw back $900 million Congress had provided for HIV/AIDS services and other global health initiatives this year, but insisted that it was keeping programs that provide treatment intact. Even if the Trump administration isn't cutting treatment funding, it has cut other awards that ensure drugs reach people, Russell said. She pointed to a terminated USAID award that was delivering drugs to faith-based nonprofit clinics in Uganda. 'The medicine is literally languishing on shelves in a massive warehouse behind the U.S. embassy,' Russell said. Coons said prevention, if that's what's on the chopping block, is as important as treatment: 'For us to step back from supporting not just treatment but prevention puts us at risk of a reemergence of a more lethal, drug resistant form of HIV/AIDS.' Leading Republicans aren't objecting, even though PEPFAR was created by then-President George W. Bush and long enjoyed bipartisan support. Senate Foreign Relations Chair Jim Risch of Idaho declined to comment when POLITICO asked him about the program. Earlier this year, Risch said PEPFAR was 'in jeopardy' after the Biden administration acknowledged that Mozambique, a country in east Africa, had misused program funds to provide at least 21 abortions. Rep. Brian Mast (R-Fla.), who leads the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said he agrees with the cuts Trump has made and suggested he would want more in the future. 'We also need to be asking the question: How long should American taxpayers borrow money to fund HIV medication for 20 million Africans?' Mast said. The top Democratic appropriators in the House and Senate accused the White House in late May of failing to provide detailed and legally required information about what the administration is doing with billions of dollars Congress directed it to spend. Sen. Patty Murray of Washington and Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut wrote to the White House Office of Management and Budget that the administration's decision to not abide by a funding law Trump signed in March has 'degraded Congress' capacity to carry out its legislative responsibilities' and move forward with fiscal 2026 spending bills. It has also clouded plans for reupping the law that directs the PEPFAR program. It expired in March. Mast has said that Congress would consider PEPFAR's future by September, as part of a larger debate about State Department priorities. But Democrats wonder how they could move forward with reauthorizing the program given the uncertainty surrounding it, said a Senate Democratic aide speaking anonymously to share internal debates.