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3 Comments Maine Has Forgotten a Little Detail
Actually, it isn’t just Maine but many public schools have veered so far off to the left one would think they are being steered by a drunken Exxon tanker captain. However, Maine has upped the ante even higher on the continued assault on the parents of public school children.
Now, the school board of King Middle School of Portland, Maine has instituted a new policy of the distribution of the “pill” or contraceptive to sexually active girls ages 11-13. If the girls opt for this, by Maine confidentiality laws, the parents have no rights to be informed. Hello? No rights to be informed if your child who is undergoing puberty is going to be given medication that alters their reproductive process. When a doctor was questioned as to whether or not giving the pill to 11-13 year old might be harmful, the only answer was “Probably not.” Probably? So now we get to give pharmaceutical companies a new guinea pig for side effects of birth control pills, kids. Lovely.
Let us look at the details cited in a new light which most of the media will ignore. Because of a startling increase in pregnancies in the ages of 11-13 and a few girls who told the school nurse they were sexually active, this new “aid” was proposed. The numbers were 17 pregnancies and 6 girls who talked to the nurse. Sounds like a lot? Well, what the media omits can be found on the Portland, Maine government website under population.
From their website we find out that the population of Portland, Maine is 64,249. Of this, 18.8% are under the age of 18 or 12,079 kids. Boiling that down to an average per age we get 671 kids per year of age. So that makes for 2013 kids in the 11-13 age range. 17 pregnancies out of 2013 equates to 0.8%. Those 6 girls equate into 0.3% of the population of middle school kids. So all this for less than 1%?
There are other approaches that do work and would work with far less irritation and anger. You can use the programmed dolls that simulate colicky babies to give them a taste of what parenthood is. You could even do something else to get a message across to the kids and the adults. It would be a silly thing called using the existing laws. In particular, most states have this silly law called statutory rape. Enforce it.
What can the parents do? Voice their opposition in three primary ways. First would be to never let them hear the end of it. Second is to remove your child from the public school system. When enough numbers are removed the schools will be hurt financially as their monetary system is calculated on how many children are in the school or district. Lastly, actively campaign and vote against any referendum the school district puts out there requesting additional funds. Starve the district out of $$$ and specify why. Also, change the school board.
Perhaps then the public school(s) will begin to understand a key point. Any person employed by the public sector is a public servant. That is you do not dictate to the parents. The parents pay your salary. You serve them.
Pretty wild, isn’t it? It’s boggling that schools would go this far. It makes you wonder if it’s a problem with parents or with schools though; after all, would schools need to overreach their bounds like this if parents where actually doing their job at home?
Of course, that’s a rhetorical question. Last I heard, this decision in Maine was based off of a survey of students that revealed that 5 claimed to be sexually active. Apparently just 5 is considered to be enough to incite panic in the school system and drive schools to administer birth control pills to 11-year olds.
Hello arclightzero,
I fully agree this is rather out there. I’m not certain if you have had the pleasure or not of using one of those programmable dolls?
Quite simply, it is full of sensors and programmable to perfectly mimic a baby. It catalogs how much time you spend holding it, how long it takes you to change its diaper, feeding schedule, every single aspect. So instead of birth control pills, a life prep class with a month of these kids programmed to be colicky (cry a lot and often during the night) would be an awesome form of birth control. But that would be teaching responsibility and that’s going against public education. :p
5 kids out of 2013 for the 11-13 yr old range is in the norm for irresponsible parents. I dealt with the Emotionally Disturbed branch and those numbers are about right. But no school district would impose ED educational correction methods on the entire school body.
So I would use that programmable doll as a form of “step therapy”. Those girls that want to get birth control get the doll instead first. (Also an indirect way of telling their parents.) But I do know of one mother who is all for putting her kid on birth control pills from the start of puberty. Sick as it is.
Ah, that is very interesting. I hadn’t thought about that approach, but it is very smart. Something of a lesson in unintended consequences… I think it is a much better approach than simply handing things out and hoping for the best. Children – especially younger children – need to be taught that there are, in fact, consequences to their actions. The current mentality of sheltering and protecting children from consequences is doing nothing but creating greater problems down the road.