{"id":14294,"date":"2016-03-23T08:05:49","date_gmt":"2016-03-23T15:05:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/alaska-schools-to-implement-new-abuse-prevention-curriculum\/"},"modified":"2016-03-23T08:05:49","modified_gmt":"2016-03-23T15:05:49","slug":"alaska-schools-to-implement-new-abuse-prevention-curriculum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/alaska-schools-to-implement-new-abuse-prevention-curriculum\/","title":{"rendered":"Alaska schools to implement new abuse prevention curriculum"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>KENAI \u2014<\/strong> Alaska\u2019s 54 public school districts will soon be preparing to implement programs next year aimed at preventing dating violence and sex abuse.<\/p>\n<p>A task force working to create a model curriculum for the Safe Children\u2019s Act will present its recommendations for a sexual awareness and prevention bill that passed in 2015 by June 30. The legislation will take effect June 30, 2017, The Peninsula Clarion reported.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur hope is that the task force will work with districts to develop low-impact, high-gains programs that allow districts to provide meaningful educational opportunities for students,\u201d said John Pothast, director of secondary education for the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District.<\/p>\n<p>Under the bill, schools would establish sexual abuse prevention training programs for employees and students in kindergarten through 12th grade. Students in the seventh through 12th grades would also receive training on dating violence and abuse prevention. All information must be deemed age appropriate, and parents can excuse their children through a written request.<\/p>\n<p>According to the 2015 Alaska Youth Risk Behavior Survey, 7.5 percent of all high school students reported having forced sexual intercourse, while 9.5 percent reported experiencing physical dating violence and 10.1 percent reported experiencing sexual dating violence.  The Alaska Department of Health and Social Services gathers the data from high school students statewide each year.<\/p>\n<p>Patricia Owen with the Department of Education &amp; Early Development said the legislation passed last year allows \u201call of us to work together to keep our children safe and end the high rates of abuse and violence in Alaska.\u201d She said many districts have already established similar programs, and will be able to make changes based on the task force\u2019s findings.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSchool districts will have the year between the recommendations and implementation,\u201d Owen said. \u201cIt\u2019s up to individual school districts to implement the curriculum of their choice.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>KENAI \u2014 Alaska\u2019s 54 public school districts will soon be preparing to implement programs next year aimed at preventing dating violence and sex abuse. A task force working to create a model curriculum for the Safe Children\u2019s Act will present its recommendations for a sexual awareness and prevention bill that passed in 2015 by June [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-14294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14294\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14294"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=14294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}