An Arizona federal judge ruled that Peoria's school board didn't violate Heather Rooks's free speech rights when they attempted to shut down her scripture readings. It left the question open on if she's violating the constitution.
Mesa Rep. Lorena Austin is trying (again) to get a license plate bill passed to aid students after it has met all the required legislative rules. Republicans appear to be blocking it.
In Arizona, only “4% of LGBTQ+ students in Arizona reported receiving LGBTQ+-inclusive sex education at school” according to a state profile by GLSEN, an LGBTQ+ education group. The report also showed that most of the queer-identifying students they identified in Arizona experienced victimization at school, likely due to content restrictions: the group’s report found that in states with more LGBTQ+ restrictions in schools, educators are “discouraged from providing other support for LGBTQ students.”
Across the nation, LGBTQ+ students are often categorized as most at risk for poor mental, physical, and medical health outcomes due to lack of comprehensive sex education.
And LGBTQ+ high school students who were sexually active were about twice as likely as other students to report becoming pregnant or getting someone pregnant, according to a 2015 study published in the American Journal of Public Health.
Implementing a proper curriculum, educators said, can address those issues.
But the state has been slow on implementing changes that would help students, and instead has tried to increase criminal penalties for teachers if they don't get explicit permission for certain materials—even banning them through vaguely worded laws that would leave it to parents to decide what material is "sexually explicit."
This isn't a new problem, though. Students going back decades told LOOKOUT that their sexual education in Arizona's public and charter schools were sorely lacking, resulting in sexually transmitted infections, an inability to recognize what sexual assault was when they were younger, and fear around sex.
Shelby Rae Wills moved to Phoenix in 2022 to pursue their Master’s degree in Investigative Journalism. They taught English in California and in Eastern Europe through the Peace Corps.
LOOKOUT Publications (EIN: 92-3129757) is a federally recognized nonprofit news outlet.
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