New York schools to revise AIDS, sex education

New York mayor Michael Bloomberg announced last week in the midst of media reports about the failure of city schools to meet state mandates for AIDS and sex education that his administration will overhaul its curricula and expand instruction in those areas, the New York Post reports. Currently sex education is offered in the eighth and 11th grades at New York City schools, but Bloomberg says he plans to begin offering the classes earlier and more frequently. Roger Platt, director of the Office of School Health, confirmed media reports that said the city's sex education curriculum hasn't been updated for 20 years and that the AIDS curriculum is so far out of date that it still claims that gay white men account for the vast majority of U.S. HIV infections, when African-Americans are now the largest group affected by the epidemic. Platt says the new sex education and AIDS curricula will include "sound advice" from health professionals and education experts. A new sex education curriculum could be in place by the end of the year, with an AIDS curriculum likely to follow in 2005.