Revere school board to meet on contraceptive availability

REVERE – With a ballot question seeking to ban it hanging over their heads, School Committee members meet next Tuesday to review a spring decision making birth control available at the high school health center.Contraceptives, including condoms, are available to students who are enrolled in the center and whose parents indicate on an enrollment form their interest in having their child have access to birth control.Condom availability opponents over the summer gathered 1,909 local residents’ signatures in support of an initiative petition calling for a suspension of the policy until it can be reviewed by an advisory council including parents.Contraceptive opponents want the committee to act on the following recommendation:”Should the School Committee temporarily suspend distribution of contraception and ‘Plan B,’ known as the morning after-pill, at Revere High School and form an advisory council of parents and others to evaluate health risks and benefits of both contraception and abstinence recommendations submitted to the School Committee for consideration prior to the School Committee deciding whether to lift the suspension.”Under state law, the recommendation will be placed on the Nov. 3 ballot if the recommendation “is not passed without alteration” by the committee. The committee has until Sept. 29 to act on the recommendation – 20 days from the date the City Clerk’s office certified the petition signatures.School Superintendent Paul Dakin this week said parent interest in the policy is rising in anticipation of a discussion on it Tuesday by committee members.”We’re getting a lot of calls and e-mails asking, ‘What is this?'”Dakin defended the policy, saying it sets up a two-tier requirement for making contraception available. Parents must first enroll their teenager in the health center; then they must check off a box on the enrollment form granting permission for their son or daughter to obtain birth control at the center.”Calling it a distribution policy is inaccurate,” he said.Committee members voted 4-2 in favor of the plan Feb. 24 with members Michael Ferrante and Ann Raponi voting in opposition. The vote gave permission for the health center to revise student enrollment forms to include parental checkoff for contraceptive distribution.Mayor Thomas Ambrosino, Carol Tye, Daniel Maguire and Donna Wood Pruitt voted for the policy and Ambrosino said he stands by the February vote.”I think the committee made the right decision,” he said Thursday.Half a dozen residents and two local clergy in April spoke before the committee in opposition to condom availability. Soon after attending the April 16 committee hearing, Revere resident Kathleen Magno and other opponents followed up their testimony by launching a letter writing campaign in opposition to 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 in June. Magno thinks the policy sends “a message of promiscuity” to her nephew and other teenagers attending Revere High.Dakin said 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 years old.The last ballot question presented to local voters in a municipal election was the 2001 proposal, approved by voters, to establish a four-year term for mayor.