Beaufort committee reviews online Personal Health course, assigns members to reproductive-health lessons

The Beaufort County Health Advisory Committee on an announced meeting reviewed a draft online Personal Health and Wellness course and assigned committee members to review specific reproductive-health lessons before a follow-up meeting in mid-June.

The committee’s chair, Amy Prior, said the course review will use a shared spreadsheet that lists module names, state objectives, lesson titles and a comments column so reviewers can provide feedback without navigating the full online course. “We have each of the modules starts with the name of the module as well as the state objectives so that you have them to refer back to,” Prior said.

Cindy Ambrose, executive director of the Lowcountry Education Consortium and presenter of the course, said the consortium developed the course with partner districts and subject-matter experts. “One of our organization's programs is an full-time online program for grades 5 through 9,” Ambrose said, adding that partner districts can request courses and adapt content to local context. Ambrose told the committee that modules six and seven address reproductive health, sexual-abuse awareness and advocacy, and that those modules require district-level review and sign-off with the State Department of Education and community vetting before adoption.

Ambrose also described how course videos are hosted inside a district learning management system (LMS) repository to avoid students encountering public ads. “Most of the videos came out of YouTube for education and they they don't have ads, but occasionally, there could be a video that had an ad because it was on the general YouTube,” she said, adding that only white-listed external web links would be provided to district IT staff.

The committee agreed to divide work among members so no one must review the entire course. Chair Prior laid out planned reviewer assignments for modules six and seven: Wanda Glaze will review lesson 6.01 and portions of module 7 (including pregnancy and adoption); Constance Pope will review 6.04 (healthy vs. unhealthy relationships) and 7.03; Sandra Limbo will review sections on sexting and laws (6.05) and parts of module 7; student member Caleb Singleton will review module 7 and the terms-and-definitions section. Prior said staff member Miss Kushenbery will distribute the spreadsheet and coordinate assignments.

Members discussed the timeline for completing reviews so districts can prepare for a fall offering. Committee members mentioned district board meeting dates (June 9 and June 23) and the academic committee date (June 22) while evaluating whether to meet the second week of June or the following week. After discussion, the committee set a follow-up Health Advisory Committee meeting for Monday, June 15 at 5:00 p.m.; members were told Zoom attendance would be available.

Procedural items: the committee approved the meeting agenda and the minutes from Feb. 18 by unanimous consent at the start of the session. A motion to adjourn later passed by unanimous consent.

The committee requested help recruiting a medical professional or clergy members and additional parents to broaden representation. Staff and presenters asked members to enter comments and navigation issues in the shared spreadsheet and to contact staff (or the presenters) with any technical questions before the next meeting.