Contraceptive checkoff views on Revere docket

REVERE – The School Committee debated this issue in March before voting on it, but now the board will give local residents another chance tonight to discuss allowing students enrolled in the school health center to obtain condoms and other birth control with parental permission.City Council members want more public comment on the policy and the School Committee will hear anyone interested in commenting at 5 p.m. in the high school committee meeting room.Under the policy, new health center enrollment forms will be revised to include a parental checkoff for contraceptive distribution. School Superintendent Paul Dakin said the first solid indicator of parental views on the checkoff will come in late summer when parents enroll or re-enroll children for the 2009-2010 school year.About 400 students are enrolled in the center.”It’s a family choice issue. We’ve decided it,” Committee member Carol Tye said Wednesday.Tye, Mayor Thomas Ambrosino, Daniel Maguire and Donna Wood Pruitt voted for the proposal in March while Michael Ferrante and Ann Raponi voted against it.”I couldn’t vote ‘yes’ in good conscience,” said Raponi after the vote, adding, “This program, voluntary or not, tends to increase promiscuity: it’s almost like condoning early sex. Money is better spent on talking to these kids about understanding consequences.”Dakin said those types of conversations do occur between health workers, counselors and students but stressed that state “emancipated minor” laws provided broad latitude of teen access to birth control. He stressed that condoms and other birth control are not currently distributed at the health center.Dakin said the so-called opt-out proposal was the product of discussions between local health professionals and educators.Background information provided about the proposal in the Feb. 24 committee minutes indicates it grew out of talks with school employees and Massachusetts General Hospital representatives. The minutes indicate “students were advised to go to MGH offices on Broadway or Ocean Avenue to obtain contraceptives.”State public health statistics show a sharp increase in Revere’s teen birth rate. The rate for 2007, according to a Massachusetts Teen Pregnancy Alliance review of the statistics, was 45.6 per 1,000 or 48 births. In 2006, Revere’s rate was 37 per 1,000 with 39 births. The 23-percent increase in the rate ranks Revere 12th among Massachusetts communities. The statistics cover females ages 15 to 19.