The textbooks titled “Comprehensive Health Skills” that come in a version for middle school and high school students, cover topics like nutrition, physical activity, sexual orientation, and gender identity.
Earlier this week, the Miami-Dade School Board voted against adopting two new sex education textbooks for the 2022-23 school year. With a narrow vote of 5-4, the decision followed emotionally charged debate between more than 40 parents and board members.
One of the parents who spoke out against the contents of the textbooks, Alex Serrano, explained that he had pulled his children out of public school and enrolled them in a private school. He reached this decision after learning that the sex-ed textbooks exposed his children to information that he believes in not appropriate for their age.
“We are not against sexual education or human reproduction and sexual education books. We are for statutory compliance and age appropriateness in the content … and compliance with parental rights law,” said Serrano.
As a representative for the Miami-Dade chapter for County Citizens Defending Freedom, a right-leaning organization, Serrano added that discussions about gender ideology “do not belong” in the classroom because they are not based on factual or educational information but rather “ideology”.
In March, Republican Governor Ron DeSantis signed the “Parental Rights in Education” bill prohibiting classroom instruction on sexual education and gender identity for students in kindergarten through grade 3.
