Reposted from the Pike County Courier:

Kathryn Braisted

WESTFALL — The new elective class that focuses on sex education wasn’t very impressive or effective, according to some Delaware Valley High School students who recently completed the course.

The class, which is opted for via students’ gym period, is taught using Aspire, an 80-page, eight- chapter workbook that emphasizes abstinence as the safest, healthiest lifestyle. It is designed to run for 15 days, or half a marking period, and also comes with an optional parent component. Included in the book are chapters on the media, goal-setting, drugs and alcohol, and sexually transmitted diseases. According to DVHS teacher Dolores Brennan, that last chapter is what the course is required to be centered around.

Though Aspire solely promotes abstinence, Brennan says that while teachers can talk additionally about condom use, it is school district policy that the discussion is only in regard to sexually transmitted disease prevention, not safe sex practices.

For senior Jordyn Horning, that isn’t good enough. Horning, who was representative of several other students interviewed, said, “Aspire wasn’t so much a sex-ed class as it was abstinence-ed.”

Horning was in a class of about 15 other seniors. “It preached all the ways and reasons why you should abstain, rather than ways to protect yourself and avoid pregnancy. I wouldn’t recommend taking it,” she said.

From the teacher’s point of view, Brennan said she had a class one period with three students who chose the course because they didn’t want to participate in gym. That sort of motivation is what Brennan says renders the class a let-down.

“I think the subject interests the kids, but it’s all about your values,” she said, noting that the seniors were much more vocal in their dislike of Aspire.

“I’m disappointed in the way the course turned out. It’s a step in the right direction, but there has to be a better way to spread the message,” Brennan concluded.

The Pike County Child Death Review Team is holding a Reality Tour at the First Presbyterian Church in Milford from 12pm – 3pm on Saturday, February 21, 2009. You can download the sign- up form here: http://www.mediafire.com/? sharekey=e193c9303a84e6f291b20cc0d07ba4d2e0da1a754a44bb69.

The Reality Tour, a dramatic, narrative, interactive walk in the life of a teen on heroin can be presented in any community – urban or rural using CANDLE, Inc.’s Reality Tour Program Model. Parents rate it as ‘priceless’. Thousands of PA residents have attended the parent/child Reality Tour to understand the full spectrum of substance abuse and participate in a Q & A session with law enforcement officers, parents of addicts and addicts in recovery. In PA the Atty. General has supplied funding to purchase the program It is a research-based (NREPP Review Pending) program.

The purpose of the Child Death Review Team is to review deaths of children ages birth – 21 years and suggest preventative measures to implement in the community to prevent further deaths. The Pike County team has identified drug prevention as a needed resource in our community. We have been training several dedicated volunteers to conduct this program in Pike County.

Update (2/9): the meeting has been canceled.

It has been but a few months since the last time the Delaware Valley School Board violated the Pennsylvania Sunshine Act by closing a meeting to the public that should have been open. On Thursday, the district announced a transportation meeting set for Tuesday at 1pm, according to local media who received the release. Because the notice is not sufficient, that Tuesday meeting will once again fail to meet the legal requirements of the Sunshine Act.

The Sunshine Act states:

"(b) Notice. With respect to any provision of this act that requires public notice to be given by a certain date, the agency, to satisfy its legal obligation, must give the notice in time to allow it to be published or circulated within the political subdivision where the principal office of the agency is located or the meeting will occur before the date of the specified meeting."

"(i) Publication of notice of the place, date and time of a meeting in a newspaper of general circulation, as defined by 45 Pa.C.S. 101 (relating to definitions), which is published and circulated in the political subdivision where the meeting will be held, or in a newspaper of general circulation which has a bona fide paid circulation in the political subdivision equal to or greater than any newspaper published in the political subdivision."

If this public meeting was announced on Thursday, no newspaper that fits the criteria of the Sunshine Act will be able to put it into circulation by Tuesday.

Posting it on the door of the district office and simply sending out a press release does not satisfy the law. Many citizen have repeatedly brought this to the board's attention.

I am no lawyer, but the law is clear. Its intent is to allow the public to know what is going on in their government and participate if they want to, which is their right.

One of the motivating factors of PCYC's School Board 2.0 project is to bring more transparency to the board when meetings such as these happen, and to keep the community (including the students whom this directly affects) in the loop by providing information that is otherwise not available.

Post by Nick Troiano, Executive Director

The PIke County Youth Coalition was recently selected to become a participating partner in the Flip Video Spotlight program. Participating partners are qualified nonprofit organizations committed to using video to achieve their program goals. The mission of the program is to help nonprofit organizations use the power of video to make the world a better place.

Flip video cameras are easy-to-use, high-quality devices with on-board software to enable editing, organizing, and video publishing through AOL, YouTube, MySpace, and other popular video sharing sites. The PCYC will use the video cameras to document its work through the Youth Volunteer Corps and for other projects.

I am and will always be a “govie.” What is a govie, you ask? It is your son’s first grade teacher. It is the architect who designed your house. It is the researcher who helped develop your antibiotics. It is your best friend, it may even be you.

For those readers who are not familiar with the Governor’s Schools of Excellence (PGSE), the top juniors and seniors from high schools around the state are selected to attend class, tuition free, for five weeks. Areas of study include: the school of Arts, Sciences, Global Entrepreneurship, Health Care, Information Society and Technology, International Studies, Teaching, and Agricultural Sciences. Graduates are govies.

Governor Rendell has recently announced that due to budget cuts, these eight schools of excellence may have to be terminated. A decision could come any day.

Each of these schools produces a myriad more of better educated more mature and learned people than any other program in the country. Although the entire country is in a stressful economic crisis, without the opportunity of Governor’s school, so many students like me would not have the opportunities we have now.

I attended the School for the Arts (PGSA) this summer which opened the door for me into almost any art school I wanted to attend. Also, for many schools in-state, being a PGSE alumnus offers scholarships unavailable to other students. I ask, no, I beg of you to help support the cause to keep these Governor’s schools. The opportunity given to me has changed my life, and to take that away from anyone in the future is unfair.

I saw with my own eyes as 200 kids from all over the state grew together and became a more mature group of people. These are the people that will advocate the arts in our future that will keep them alive for the generations to come. I know as well that in the other Governor’s Schools, a very similar bond was made between the students and that all of those students feel the same way about their own Governor’s School. PGSA became my family. Everyone was greeted with smile and left with many hugs and promises of further contact. The relationships that were created are the threads that will grow to create amazing connections in the future.

As an active citizen of Pennsylvania, I am so disheartened to hear that the Governor now wants to end the program. When parents, grandparents, friends and family greet the student that has just spent their summer learning from this amazing and eye opening program, they just know that the program has changed their loved one for the better. Almost every alumnus from any Governor’s school feels very similarly but our voices may not be enough.

We need your help, and so do all of the potential artists, dancers, doctors, teachers, biologists, photographers, writers, computer scientists, global entrepreneurs and anyone else who could have the opportunity to attend PGSE in the future. We need you to show Governor Rendell how important these programs are. It may cost a lot but I think those extra dollars going towards hundred’s of children’s well being each year are worth it. Every PGSE is a life changing experience and the lives of the kids who come out of there are worth more than saving money.

Kathryn Yuen is a student at Delaware Valley High School and a member of the Pike County Youth Coalition.