Utah teacher placed on leave after questionnaire on sex and drug use given to students
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ROY, Utah — A high school teacher was placed on administrative leave after handing students a questionnaire that asked them about sexually explicit activities and delinquent behavior, a spokesman for the Weber School District said Monday.
The teacher, who was not identified, handed the survey out to 11th-grade students at Roy High School last week. The class provided instruction in human sexuality and the questionnaire was issued without parental consent, district spokesman Lane Findlay told KSL.com.
He said the teacher in question was a veteran within the Weber School District and didn’t believe there was any “malicious” intent with the survey.
A copy of the questionnaire has since been removed from the district’s portal. However, it was posted to several websites, including scarymommy.com. The 30-question survey asked students questions from drug use to sexual activity and abortion and originated from a 1967 Ann Landers survey about sex and drugs.
The final score ranked students from “a nerd — just where you should be at your age” to “hopeless and condemned.” Students in the class were asked to put their names down for a grade.
“Basically parents consent to have their students be able to discuss and learn about some of those topics. Unfortunately, we had a questionnaire that was given out to students as a part of this course and that questionnaire was outside the approved curriculum,” Findlay said. “We had some parents that came up to us with some concerns about the contents of that questionnaire, so we’ve been looking into it to figure out how that ended up in the classroom and what do we need to do to remedy that situation.”
Findlay said two federal acts and state laws prohibit surveys eliciting information about a student’s sexual behaviors, attitudes, sexual orientation or involvement in criminal behavior. He said district policy notes that teachers are expected to use “professional judgment and discretion in providing age-appropriate material.”
Findlay added the district and high school apologized to students and parents for the questionnaire and that it would not be used in the future. It was removed from the school’s portal to ensure it wasn’t distributed in other classrooms.
“Given the contents of the survey, it is inappropriate,” he said. “We’ve looked at it — it’s unacceptable that it ended up in the classroom. … We’re taking it very seriously.”
This article was originally published by KSL.com. It is used here with permission.
