Washington State Senate sends OSPI-backed sexual health education bill back to House

Leg­is­la­tion that would require med­ical­ly accu­rate, com­pre­hen­sive sex­u­al health edu­ca­tion to be taught in Wash­ing­ton’s pub­lic schools was revived today in the state Sen­ate, which vot­ed along par­ty lines to re-adopt Claire Wilson’s SB 5395 and return it to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives for fur­ther consideration.

Request­ed by State Super­in­ten­dent of Pub­lic Instruc­tion Chris Reyk­dal, the bill is intend­ed to help young peo­ple at many dif­fer­ent stages of child­hood and young adult­hood make bet­ter deci­sions about their health and their future.

The bil­l’s main pro­vi­sions, as sum­ma­rized by the staff of the Sen­ate Demo­c­ra­t­ic cau­cus (whose mem­bers sup­plied all of the votes for the bill), are as follows:

• Expand com­pre­hen­sive sex­u­al health edu­ca­tion cur­ricu­lum to all grade 6–12 schools across the state, phased in over sev­er­al years;
• Phase in age-appro­pri­ate cur­ricu­lum for K‑5 grades; and
• Allow par­ents to exempt chil­dren from sex­u­al health edu­ca­tion class­es on request.

The roll call was as follows:

Roll Call
SB 5395
Sex­u­al health education
3rd Read­ing & Final Passage
1/22/2020

Yeas: 28; Nays: 21

Vot­ing Yea: Sen­a­tors Bil­lig, Car­lyle, Cleve­land, Con­way, Darneille, Das, Dhin­gra, Frockt, Hasegawa, Hobbs, Hunt, Keis­er, Kud­er­er, Liias, Lovelett, McCoy, Mul­let, Nguyen, Ped­er­sen, Ran­dall, Rolfes, Sal­daña, Salomon, Stan­ford, Takko, Van De Wege, Well­man, Wil­son (Claire)

Vot­ing Nay: Sen­a­tors Beck­er, Braun, Brown, Erick­sen, For­tu­na­to, Hawkins, Holy, Hon­ey­ford, King, Muz­za­ll, O‘Ban, Pad­den, Rivers, Schoesler, Shel­don, Short, Wag­oner, Walsh, War­nick, Wil­son (Lyn­da), Zeiger

“Some peo­ple hear the words ‘sex edu­ca­tion’ and mis­take the focus of the cur­ricu­lum, which is health and safe­ty, and is age-appro­pri­ate for each grade lev­el,” said Wil­son in a state­ment fol­low­ing the bil­l’s pas­sage. Wil­son serves as the vice chair of the Sen­ate Ear­ly Learn­ing and K‑12 Edu­ca­tion Committee.

“This is about mak­ing sure younger chil­dren know what kind of touch­ing is inap­pro­pri­ate, whether by peers or preda­tors,” Wil­son added.

“It’s about help­ing old­er stu­dents rec­og­nize and resist abu­sive or coer­cive behav­ior. It’s about teach­ing all chil­dren to respect diver­si­ty and not to bul­ly others.”

“Stu­dents need a safe place to ask ques­tions, to ful­ly under­stand con­sent, and to have the infor­ma­tion they need to make safe deci­sions,” Wil­son emphasized.

“There are chil­dren who will be tar­get­ed for molesta­tion in the com­ing year. There are young women who may face sex­u­al coer­cion or assault. They need access to infor­ma­tion and lessons that will enable them to make deci­sions to ensure their health and safety.”

Our team at NPI strong­ly agrees. It’s why we’ve made adop­tion of SB 5395 one of our leg­isla­tive pri­or­i­ties for the 2020 leg­isla­tive session.

We’re grate­ful to Sen­a­tor Wil­son for her efforts to advance this leg­is­la­tion. We also com­mend Sen­a­tor Lisa Well­man (D‑41st Dis­trict) and Sen­a­tor Man­ka Dhin­gra (D‑45th Dis­trict, also a North­west Pro­gres­sive Foun­da­tion board­mem­ber) for thought­ful­ly con­tribut­ing their per­spec­tives to the debate in sup­port of this bill. Their floor speech­es today were very mean­ing­ful and on point.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, much of what we heard from the Repub­li­can side today was utter non­sense. Phil For­tu­na­to offered hys­ter­i­cal rhetoric, while Doug Erick­sen sar­cas­ti­cal­ly offered his vote in exchange for Demo­c­ra­t­ic sup­port for vouchers.

Sad­ly, even though it’s 2020, sex­u­al­i­ty and sex­u­al health are still con­sid­ered by many to be taboo top­ics… which is tru­ly unfortunate.

As Sen­a­tor Wil­son says, knowl­edge is pow­er. Young peo­ple should­n’t have to rely on savvy peers or the Inter­net to learn how to take care of them­selves, under­stand their bod­ies, and main­tain appro­pri­ate rela­tion­ships built on con­sent and hon­est com­mu­ni­ca­tion. SB 5395 is leg­is­la­tion that young Wash­ing­to­ni­ans need.

Oppo­nents of SB 5395 keep disin­gen­u­ous­ly argu­ing that we should sim­ply “trust par­ents” to talk to their kids about these topics.

But most Wash­ing­ton par­ents choose to send their chil­dren to pub­lic schools as opposed to pri­vate schools or home-school­ing because they want their chil­dren to receive a well-round­ed edu­ca­tion taught by pro­fes­sion­al, knowl­edge­able instruc­tors using cur­ricu­lum that has been thor­ough­ly vetted.

Young peo­ple ben­e­fit just as much from learn­ing about sex­u­al health and con­sent as they do about math, sci­ence, lan­guages, the arts, or any oth­er subject.

We encour­age any par­ent fol­low­ing the debate over SB 5395 who has con­cerns to read the bill, give Super­in­ten­dent Chris Reyk­dal’s office an oppor­tu­ni­ty to answer any ques­tions they may have, and review the exist­ing cur­ricu­lum that is already being offered to our stu­dents. Again, knowl­edge is power!

Con­grat­u­la­tions to the Sen­ate on approv­ing this leg­is­la­tion. We’re ready to help move it through the State House of Representatives.