For the past couple of weeks D’Andria Smith has spent her Fridays at Somerset Wilton Manors school teaching lessons from a curriculum called “Relationships Smarts” to a classroom of middle schoolers.
On a recent Friday, the 26-year-old personal responsibility program educator spoke with students about how to safely break up with someone and the dangers of dating violence. Then, a student began describing a potentially toxic relationship.
“She was using someone as an ‘example’ but it was clear that the person was her,” Smith recalled, “And she was like, ‘What if this person is really jealous when she sees her boyfriend talking to another girl?’”
Smith works for the Opportunities Industrialization Center, most commonly referred to as OIC of SFL. It is a non-profit organization that focuses on helping people become self-sufficient through workforce readiness training, family strengthening and job placement.
Smith explained that her department, the Youth and Family Services Division, focuses on guiding youth aspirations by providing people ages 10 to 22 with student enrichment opportunities both in and out of the classroom.
“You get to see how they think when it comes to relationships,” she said. “I feel when talking to them about healthy and unhealthy relationships they know what a bad relationship is, but are still in that phase where they think it’s cute.”
Florida House Bill 1069, a new education law, took effect on July 1, 2023. It has altered the conversations and topics that can be taught and discussed with students. One component of this bill prohibits classroom instruction on issues like sexual orientation and gender identity as well as specific terminology related to health and reproductive education. It also requires a review of library and classroom materials available to students.
According to the Sex Ed for Social Change Foundation (SIECUS), a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group, Florida schools are also not required to teach sex education to their students. Instead, they must focus on health education including the consequences of teen pregnancy and abstinence. This bill is said to be a part of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ anti-woke agenda.
Since passing the bill, the Florida governor has received backlash from U.S. publishers and authors who are currently suing the state. According to an article by journalist Porter Anderson, the lawsuit’s plaintiffs include six major publishing companies, the Authors Guild, five prominent authors, and two students and parents who oppose House Bill 1069, which was signed into law May 17, 2023.
They claim it violates the Supreme Court test associated with Miller v. California, a legal test that determines if material is obscene and offensive – and so can be banned by the government. But this law affects not only authors whose books have been banned but educators as well.
Materials that educate students about contraceptives could be deemed as offensive and educators, such as Adrianna Brown, will no longer be able to speak about it. She says, “It’s really scary because growing up we had health education in school. I was taught about abstinence, contraceptives and things like that.”
She also expressed concern about parents feeling uncomfortable talking about it, leaving the kids without information they need.
Brown has many years of experience working with youth across various sectors including child protection services and other nonprofit organizations. She has been at OIC for the past four years as a personal responsibility education programmer and mainly facilitates her lessons with high schoolers and teaching at alternative schools. She expressed her concerns about the direction in which legislation seemed to be heading, “It’s 2024, we have a lot of students who identify as other pronouns, and we can’t acknowledge that.”
House Bill 1069 restricts the use of pronouns in an educational setting. The bill “requires that it be policy of every public K-12 education institution that a person’s sex is an immutable biological trait and that it is false to ascribe to a person a pronoun that does not or respond to such a person’s sex.”
In 2022, NBC News published an article titled “Florida students stage school walkouts over ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill.” Jack Petocz, a student who attended Flagler Palm Coast High School at the time, staged school walkouts in response to the legislation. He was suspended indefinitely for passing out 200 pride flags for the rally.
SIECUS, the nonprofit dedicated to sex education and social change, also says that, regarding sex education in schools, “Florida has more laws prohibiting topics from being taught in sex education than required topics to be taught.” If a school does choose to include sex education in its curriculum, it must be “comprehensive health education.” This includes prevention of child sexual abuse, exploitation, human trafficking, teen dating violence, abuse, and the benefits of sexual abstinence.
Reggie Printemps is the senior project manager for OIC of SFL’s adolescent health programs. He oversees a teen pregnancy prevention, sexual risk avoidance education, and the personal responsibility education programs. These teach students about making healthy choices in terms of relationships, including lessons on STDs and HIV/AIDS, and the risk associated with being sexually active. This is content that is approved by the state.
Printemps says he was on board with the bill until he did some research and understood the restrictions his educators would face after the removal of so much information. He stated, “One of my biggest reservations is that it removes the freedom that the educators have on providing very valuable content to the kid.”
Florida has a national mental health emergency in children. Florida’s Hospital Association released a data brief in May 2023 that showed the state ranked #38 in the number of untreated youth with depression and #33 in prevalence of mental illness.
Expanding community-based support, increasing provider reimbursement, and growing the behavioral health workforce, will sustain systems of care that will meet the behavioral health needs of Floridians, according to the FHA.
Printemps’ team works with at-risk youth who live in underrepresented populations, in zip codes with low socioeconomic status. Since this bill has passed, his organization has found it to be more difficult to reach them.
“It has been a challenge because the local district is fearful of reprimand from the state for not following the bill to the T,” Printemps said. He explained that there are many gray areas that are being overlooked due to potential repercussions.
In Florida, every school district is required to submit its health education curriculum, including topics on contraception and sex, for approval. It must be posted on the district’s website for parents to review before state approval.
Printemps, a 12-year education veteran, explained that principals risk consequences like fines, pay withhold and their licenses revoked for violations. “There are a lot of stipulations that go into it and make it challenging,” he said. “Just imagine a principal not even wanting to touch the grey areas or anything they’re not totally clear on.”
Despite the odds, OIC’s youth and family educators are dedicated to reaching schools, fostering connections, and mentoring students in accordance with state and district guidelines.
Their efforts are bolstered by supportive teachers like Randell Cooper at Somerset Middle School, who invites OIC educators to engage with several of his classes on Fridays.
“I think OIC does a good job at this level of maturity in middle school at exposing them to good healthy social practices, it’s not necessarily extreme content sexually, but exposing them to the realities that they live in now.”
Cooper overall believes the OIC team effectively emphasizes the importance of healthy relationships among peers, parents and families, which is crucial for the development of young people.
He pointed out that many of these kids are a part of the “COVID generation,” having faced social challenges during the pandemic, and even adults struggle with interactions after such a prolonged isolation.
A 2022 review from the Department of Social Work examined the impact of the 2019 coronavirus and pandemic on school age children and their families mental wellness.
It affirmed that the uncertainty of the pandemic significantly “increased levels of anxiety, depression, irritability and emotional exhaustion compared with pre pandemic levels.”
Cooper sees hope in OIC of SFL for reaching the kids. “It’s about helping these kids maintain positive, healthy relationships,” he added. “Not necessarily just focused on the actual sex education, but focusing on their peers, whether their platonic or romantic, is super important, and I appreciate the OIC crew for doing a good job of that.”
Regardless of the obstacles, Adriana is driven to foster honest conversations, as she sees herself in the kids she works with.
She recalled when she learned about sex ed and pregnancy in school. “You see the pictures; you hear the stories and it’s like okay imma wait. But if we’re not having a conversation, all they’ll see is social media and Instagram.”
She highlighted the added pressure kids have from social media and isolation and the conclusions they come to. “Sex sells right now, so it’s like, I’m going to do it because my friends are doing it and I’m the only one, I’m left out.”
She hopes that regardless of the limitations, she can continue to mentor and be there for the kids.
