School survey is shocking
Sex, drug questions asked of 10, 11-year old students

By Bill Donovan
Staff Writer

GALLUP — Should a public school district be asking 11 and 12 year-old boys and girls about intimate details of their sex life?

That's the question now being raised in light of a Youth Risk and Resiliency Survey that was given at the two middle schools in the Gallup-McKinley County School District on April 30.

Besides asking questions about whether they smoke, drink alcohol or use drugs, the students were asked to answer a series of questions about how sexually active they are.

These included questions on whether they have had sexual intercourse yet, when was their first experience (under the age of eight, nine, 10 or older), how many partners they have had and whether they used a condom.

To the Rev. Jay McCollum, pastor of the Gallup Baptist Church, the school district's decision to pose these kinds of questions to such young students is just another example of the district's approach to teaching.

"I think the Gallup-McKinley County School Districts needs a complete reform in every facet of its approach to education and sexual education is just one of these facets," he said.

Criticism
McCollum has been critical of the public school district for not stressing abstinence as an option to preventing disease and unwanted pregnancies but also for promoting alternative lifestyles, such as same sex relationships and single parents.

As for the sex questions on the survey, "it's a joke," said McCollum who questioned whether the average 11 or 12-year-old student would be mature enough to deal with those kinds of questions.

That was the same concern that one of the teachers who gave the survey this year had.

"I could tell when the students got to that section of the survey because they would start snickering and nudging each other," said Diane DiPaolo, director of counseling services for the school district.

She said when she first looked over the survey, she became concerned because she worried that one of the students would ask her what "intercourse" meant and she would have to decide how she would word the answer to not offend any of her students' parents.

DiPaolo said this was the first time that the district has had this survey given to sixth and seventh graders in the district. A longer version of the survey, with the same kinds of questions about sexual activity, has been given to high school students since 2000.

The survey each year is administered by the UNM Center for Health Promotions.

Officials there said 135 of the 182 schools in the state gave the survey this year. Several school districts, including Albuquerque, decided not to participate.

Sex questions
Seven of the schools that did participate declined to use the survey with the sex questions in it and officials for the center said those districts received an alternative survey which substituted questions about bicycle usage for the sex questions.

For example, instead of asking students if they used a condom during sex, the alternative survey asked if they used a helmet while riding their bicycle.

DiPaolo said that the decision to give the survey in the middle school was made by former school superintendent Karen White.

The survey had provisions, she said, that allowed students to get out of taking it if their parents requested it. This took a note from the parents but if no note was given, students in those selected classes would be required to take the survey.

They were not, however, required to answer all of the questions.

The booklet that came with the survey said: Completing the survey is voluntary. Your grade in this class will not be affected by whether or not you answer the questions.

The introduction also stated: If you do not understand a question or you feel uncomfortable answering a question, you may leave it blank. Please try to answer every question.

The booklet stresses that the answers are confidential. Students are told not to write their names on the answer sheet.

No one knows how many students declined to answer the sex questions or the questions dealing with drug and alcohol usage. The answer sheets were sent to the center for tabulation and those results won't be told to district officials until this August.

DiPaolo said that except for questions from the Gallup Independent, there have been no complaints from anyone about the questions on the survey.

One teacher who said she was very uncomfortable giving the survey was allowed to opt out, DiPaolo said, and another teacher gave it out to students.

McCollum said that one of the aspects that concerned him about having middle school students take the test was that they would read the questions and the way they were worded and would get the impression that having sex at this early age was all right.

But DiPaolo disagreed, saying that teachers giving out the survey would stress that if the student has not had any sexual experience or has not done any alcohol or drugs, just to state that on the test. "There's no attempt to show approval," she said.

The booklet itself tells students: Answer the questions based on what you really do, not what you think you are supposed to do.

Both center and district officials said that the survey has a great deal of value for both the state and the school district.

For example, the school district has used the information provided by the survey on alcohol and drug usage to seek state and federal grants to help pay for programs to try and alleviate these problems.

Federal grants
In some cases, in order to qualify for federal grants, the school district had to supply information about the lifestyle of students in the district, information that can only come from these types of surveys.

DiPaolo said past surveys provided data to the school districts showing that a lot of students were using inhalants to get high. As a result, the district began holding classes and lectures on the dangers of using inhalants and following surveys showed usage on the decline.

As for the sex questions that have been on the high school and middle school surveys, she said that if these questions show that if sexual activity is occurring among a significant segment of students at the middle school or earlier, the district may have to deal with this in its health classes.

One teacher who gave the survey said that while she was not happy about some of the questions in the survey, she did wonder what the results would show.

Accuracy
If the test is accurate and that's a big if since it was up to the students to answer the questions honestly - the high school tests that have been given indicate that about 10 percent of the middle grade students should admit to having their first sexual experience by the time they were 12 years old.

In the 2005 survey that was given to ninth to 12th grade students, for example, 39.2 percent admitted that they have had at least one sexual experience and 27.5 percent said they were currently sexually active. This compares to 46.5 percent statewide who said they have had a sexual experience and 32.8 percent who said they were sexually active.

In that survey, 9.9 percent said that their first sexual experience occurred before they were 13 years of age. The statewide percentage was 8.3. That 8.3 was the same percentage for the number of county school students who said they had had four or more sex partners so far in their life - the state average was 13.6.