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Effingham County board reviews "Be Smart" health curriculum changes, committee seeks approval July 17
Summary
The board heard a detailed presentation on recommended additions and removals to the Be Smart K–12 personal-safety and family-life curriculum, including Vector Solutions modules, continuing MBF materials K–5, separate puberty lessons by sex, and procedures to ensure parental review and opt-out. Approval was requested at the next meeting.
An unidentified presenter for the Be Smart curriculum-review committee told the Effingham County Board of Education that the committee recommends a set of targeted updates to K–12 health and family-life instruction and will ask the board to approve the materials at the July 17 meeting. "This presentation is going to cover our policy framework, the review process, curriculum focus areas and the committee's recommendations for instructional resources and also our new pre planning procedures," the presenter said.
The presenter described the committee's composition as required by state policy and said the committee reviewed elementary, middle and high school resources with student participation in the June meetings. She said the district will continue age-appropriate personal-safety lessons in K–4, provide puberty lessons for fourth-grade girls and fifth-grade boys in spring semesters, and keep family-living and disease-prevention topics in middle and high school courses.
The committee recommended keeping MBF prevention materials for K–5 and adding Vector Solutions (formerly SafeSchools) online modules for topics including online safety, abuse prevention, human trafficking awareness, alcohol/tobacco/vape/drug prevention and bullying prevention. The presenter said the committee intentionally removed several older or inactive items and replaced them with more current digital or classroom-ready resources. "Every time I talk about the removal of something, the committee was very deliberate in making sure that we had something to replace it with," the presenter said.
Presenters emphasized parental rights and review procedures required by state policy: parents will receive information and have an opportunity to review instructional materials and may elect in writing to exclude a child from specified instruction. The presenter outlined new local implementation steps to improve consistency, including annual trainings for instructional supervisors, sign-offs that supervisors have been trained and an expectation that teachers deliver materials in a teacher-led format rather than assigning videos for independent student viewing.
Other recommendations include continuing sex-separated puberty lessons, replacing outdated VHS videos with current digital resources, and developing a locally produced video to align community values with the district's approach to abstinence messaging. The committee told the board it will present the full set of recommended resource approvals for a board vote at the July 17 meeting.
The board did not act on the recommendations at this meeting; the presenter asked for the board's review and scheduled the approval vote for July 17.
