Beaufort County advisory committee reviews Play It Safe curriculum for Aaron's Law and flags glossary edits

Beaufort County's Health Advisory Committee on Feb. 24 heard a presentation from Christina Wilson of the Child Abuse Prevention Association (CAPA) on Play It Safe, the evidence-based curriculum the organization uses to implement Aaron's Law in local schools.

"Play It Safe is an abuse prevention curriculum that does that," Christina Wilson said, describing age-appropriate lessons that use animated videos in pre-K, live-action material by second grade and topics such as bullying and sexting by fifth grade. "Get out, tell someone, and keep telling someone until someone listens to you," she said, summarizing the three-step guidance taught to young children.

The committee learned the materials CAPA uses were vetted at the state level and added as an appendix to the South Carolina State Standards along with Title 59 guidance; committee members said the district distributed a hard-copy packet and conducted a professional development day on Feb. 14 to brief every health and PE teacher in Beaufort County. Committee members discussed plans to begin teaching the material before the end of the school year so the year counts for implementation.

Why it matters: Aaron's Law statewide efforts aim to ensure consistent, age-appropriate abuse-prevention instruction from pre-K through grade 12. The committee’s review and the district’s teacher training are intended to align local classroom practice with state guidance and to make materials accessible to parents and teachers.

CAPA described monitoring and outcomes: the organization said it pretests and post-tests students, tracks trends quarterly, and credited a classroom post-test game ("Caperny") with restoring fourth-grade scores from about 80% back toward expected levels. CAPA also said it is nationally accredited and maintains a performance-quality improvement program.

Committee members raised specific edits and clarifications for the district materials. One member requested that the glossary explicitly include tobacco and vaping when listing "drugs such as alcohol and marijuana," and another asked that the text spell out "human immunodeficiency virus" before using the acronym "HIV." Members also suggested replacing the phrase "physician's prescription" with "health care provider" to reflect prescriptions written by nurse practitioners and physician assistants.

On parental opt-out, the committee heard that state Board of Education and attorney general guidance indicate there is not an opt-out for abuse-prevention instruction and that districts should expose all students to age-appropriate lessons; the Chair referenced those guidance documents during discussion. The committee flagged Gavin's Law as a separate, developing topic that the district may need to handle differently because statute and instructional materials are still evolving.

During questions, CAPA explained how disclosures are routed: a CAPA educator would bring a report to the school counselor or identified district personnel, and CAPA staff remain subject to mandated-reporter statutes. The organization said lessons are delivered coed at all ages but that it is open to school-driven changes if individual school sites prefer a different arrangement.

Board member Miss Gordon praised the presentation and urged the committee to share CAPA's materials with the full board. "I've enjoyed this presentation, and I'm sitting here with tears in my eyes," she said, thanking CAPA for its work.

Next steps: the committee discussed inviting additional providers (Hopeful Horizons and a virtual provider listed as Verizon in the meeting) to present at a future meeting and tentatively explored dates in March and April to review Gavin's Law and to host outside presenters. Committee staff will follow up by email to confirm availability and finalize the next meeting date.

No formal votes were taken at the Feb. 24 meeting; the committee made scheduling plans and requested glossary edits and further presentations as follow-up.