Revere to hold second meeting over condoms at high school

REVERE – Residents fighting a plan to distribute condoms in the high school health center will ask School Committee members on June 30 to scrap the plan.The committee voted 4-2 in favor of the plan Feb. 24 with members Michael Ferrante and Ann Raponi voting in opposition. Under the policy, new health center enrollment forms will be revised to include a parental checkoff for contraceptive distribution.Half a dozen residents and two local clergy spoke in opposition to the plan last week and Mayor Thomas Ambrosino invited them to address the issue again at next Tuesday’s School Committee policy subcommittee meeting scheduled for 3 p.m. in the superintendent’s conference room.Ambrosino, Carol Tye, Daniel Maguire and Donna Wood Pruitt voted for the policy and none of them have indicated they will ask to reconsider their vote. Revere resident Kathleen Magno hopes they will rethink the policy next week.Following the February vote and an April 16 public hearing on the policy, Magno and other residents launched a letter-writing campaign opposing condom distribution.Magno, who is also chairman of the Revere chapter of the Coalition for Marriage and Family, handed copies of some of the 590 opposition letters written by residents to committee members last week. Magno thinks the policy sends “a message of promiscuity” to her nephew and other teenagers attending Revere High.The committee’s approval of the parental “opt out” for condom distribution coincided with the release of state public health statistics showing 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 years old.Magno acknowledged the policy requires parental approval on any individual distribution of condoms, but said the policy sends a message that “sexual activity is a foregone conclusion.””We don’t tell kids when we talk about drinking, ‘Here is something that doesn’t have as much alcohol,'” she said, adding, “We should say, ‘we have something better for you.'”About 400 students are enrolled in the high school-based center.School Superintendent Paul Dakin in March 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.Dakin stressed that state “emancipated minor” laws provide broad latitude for teen access to birth control.