In recent years, the San Mateo Union High School District has worked to improve student’s accessibility to sexual health care and create a more inclusive health curriculum.
Most recently, in the spring of 2024, Aragon began providing free condoms in the health office.
“Other neighboring districts already had an [accessible condom] program,” said District Health Coordinator and health teacher at Mills High School Justin Cottrell. “It was brought to my attention in 2022 [and] I talked to all the health teachers, [and they] were definitely on board with this. This was something that we should implement for students.”
Although Aragon distributes external condoms, internal condoms are still inaccessible.
“Dental dams are hard to acquire in stores,” said department chair and health teacher Barbara Beaumont. “We got our condom kits from Planned Parenthood, [which] are free [and include] information on how to use them.”
Multiple teachers in the SMUHSD encouraged distributing condoms, including Aragon health teacher Melissa Perino, who continues to advocate for the accessibility of dental dams.
“External condoms only protect people engaged in sexual intercourse with penises,” Perino said. “If we were to include one external condom and one dental dam, then we’d prevent the transmission of diseases for all sexual activity.”
At other schools, students are taking matters into their own hands. The Gender Sexuality Alliance club at Mills High School fundraised money to buy dental dams to provide to students freely.
The district also partnered with a number of organizations, such as Planned Parenthood, to provide resources and support regarding sex education and healthcare. Because California allows 12 year old minors or older to consent to medical services, Aragon students get a pass from the office to walk to Planned Parenthood. The office would mark the student absence in classes under “school field trip” and not disclose the information to parents for confidentiality.
“Students have different relationships with their parents [and] caregivers so [it’s important] that we comply with all of the logistics related to the law [while] also supporting the students and their needs,” said the District’s Health Services Manager Sara Devaney.
An anonymous senior shared their experience at Planned Parenthood.
“I had a new partner and we were having unprotected sex, so I thought I should get an STD test,” the senior said. “It was really easy to get a pass. [At Planned Parenthood], I’ve had all female staff a few times who have been super sweet, not judgmental. They’re just there to get you whatever you need done.”
Even in the SMUHSD, resource inequality still exists among different schools. The Stanford Teen Mobile Health Van makes monthly rotations to provide free services for students who are in need of healthcare to San Mateo, Hillsdale, and Capuchino High Schools, but not Aragon. The services include tests, treatments, and counseling for multiple diseases and illnesses.
“We don’t have access to the teen health van, [but] the district has countered back to say ‘no one at Aragon is signing up for that,’” Perino said. “But it’s impossible to sign up for something that doesn’t exist on your campus [and] creates an inequity at our school.”
At Aragon, health class is a mandatory course that students take in ninth grade for five credits, as a part of the graduation requirement. They educate students on good decision-making that affects their health and follow the California Health Education Standards. The class covers nutrition, physical exercise, suicide prevention, chronic diseases, sleep, tobacco, nicotine, and other addictive substances.
“I learned [lots] of different stuff from there that you don’t typically [learn] in a classroom,” said freshman Lia Alves. “It’s very different from other classes, just in terms of the content [that] you’re learning.”
Cottrell reflects on the newly updated curriculum in May 2021.
“We were looking for a curriculum that was more diverse and appealed to various learners,” Cottrell said. “Compared with the previous update, this one is more inclusive [and] celebrates a lot of the population that we have. Our intent is [for] all students to feel seen, comfortable, [and] acknowledged.”
Although the SMUHSD promotes LGBTQ+ concepts as required by California laws, only 10 states nationally mandate LGBTQ+ topics to be included in health curricula. Furthermore, only 39 states require sex education to be taught in school and 18 states require the information to be medically accurate.
While Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed Senate Bill 541 in 2023, which would have required all public high schools to provide free internal and external condoms to students, California still has one of the most extensive sex education programs in the nation. Back in 2016, the California Healthy Young Act was passed to mandate California school districts to provide students with sex education and prevention at least once in high school and once in middle school.
However, in states such as Texas, schools are mandated to teach some sex education using the state curriculum, which is not regulated or checked for medical accuracy. According to SIECUS, Texas’ curriculum states that “homosexuality is not an acceptable lifestyle to the general public and that it is a criminal offense under the Texas Penal Code.”
According to the CDC, 93% of high schools in California taught how STIs are transmitted, while 48-100% of Texas high schools taught it. Texas also has double the rate of teen pregnancy as California.
Based on a report from the Guttmacher Institute, 57% of high schoolers in the U.S. will have sex before the end of high school. It was further found that teens from 15-24 years old contracted 55.4% of STIs cases, as stated by Ascend. As a result, improvements are needed to lower STI rates among teens.e
Cottrell feels that the neighboring high school districts on the Peninsula should update their curricula accordingly.
“Many of them have not updated their curriculum resources to include updated health education content, according to colleagues I’ve spoken with in those districts,” Cottrell said. “In fact, there’s one school district where the health teachers use a local clinic to teach about sex education because they are not trained in the same way that our district’s health teachers are.”
Perino agrees with the sentiment.
“Aragon’s in one of the wealthiest districts in the entire state,” Perino said. “If you look at our per-head spending in this district, it’s significantly more than what Oakland kids got when I taught there. [Aragon students] have access to lots of resources that kids statewide don’t have access to,”
Even though Aragon has more resources compared to other schools in other districts, some feel that advancements are still needed.
“I’m still really pushing for both the Stanford health van and dental dams,” Perino said. “I think that it sends the wrong message when we’re only offering external condoms because it makes it seem like you’re only concerned about preventing pregnancy and not preventing disease. There’s still more work that we can do.”
The senior also stressed the importance of an open dialogue about sex.
“We spend a lot of time at school so it has a lot of impact and influence on us,” the senior said. “The school needs to offer protection in a [more] comfortable manner and talk about Planned Parenthood’s services. I found out that people don’t know it, because our health education was in our freshman year [while] people often become sexually active when they’re older. Talking about it every year [or] having conversations for older students in small groups would be awesome.”
