In Massena, on the St. Lawrence River near the Canadian border, a health class slide lists historical figures said to have had syphilis, including Napoleon Bonaparte, Adolf Hitler and Vincent van Gogh, three men for whom there is no historical evidence of the disease. Another slide in the same district's materials names celebrities who have supposedly chosen abstinence, among them Lady Gaga and Robert Pattinson, both of whom have recently had children with partners they are not married to. Those details surfaced this week in a New York Focus report on a New York Civil Liberties Union review of what 50 districts across the state teach about sex, health and relationships.

The most important finding is the simplest one: New York requires public schools to teach only two pieces of what most families would call sex education: HIV and AIDS instruction, and child sexual abuse prevention. Everything else, from contraception to consent, is a local decision, which means the only reliable way to know what your child is learning is to ask your district for the materials, and state rules give you several ways to do that.

What the NYCLU review found

The NYCLU selected 50 districts, including the state's five largest, and requested their kindergarten through grade 12 sexual health curricula from the 2023-24 school year. The findings are scoped to that sample and that year, and they do not describe every district in the state. More than a third of the 50 contained medically inaccurate or misleading information. Ten teach strict abstinence only, four do not cover basic anatomy and reproduction, seventeen use shame or fear-based instruction, and three draw on materials from anti-abortion organizations. Nine present abortion as an option in a pregnancy.

The examples run across the map. Mahopac Central School District in Putnam County teaches that birth control pills put girls at greater risk of contracting a sexually transmitted infection, according to materials it sent the NYCLU. Canandaigua City School District in Ontario County gives students a claim that one in five women will become pregnant the first time they have sex. In Suffolk County, Smithtown Central School District lists a preoccupation with sex among the "behavioral clues of a potential rapist." Hamburg Central School District, which serves about 3,100 students in Erie County, warns that premarital sex leads to "disappointment, emptiness, regret, and guilt," according to Investigative Post, which republished the New York Focus story on Friday. None of the five named districts commented before publication.

Aliyah Ansari, a senior education strategist at the NYCLU, put the gap in national terms.

"New York is seen as this beacon of progressiveness when it comes to education, but we are extremely behind other states when it comes to sex education. A lot of students are getting inaccurate information, and feeling shamed and stigmatized for their identities and the choices they've made about their bodies and relationships."

California, Oregon and Washington mandate comprehensive sex education in all public schools, and New Jersey and Rhode Island require instruction on consent, healthy relationships and sexual orientation, according to the same report.

What New York law requires

The state's floor lives in two places: The first is the Commissioner's regulation on health education, 8 NYCRR 135.3, which requires appropriate instruction about AIDS as part of the sequential health program for all pupils in kindergarten through grade 6, delivered by regular classroom teachers, and again in grades 7 and 8 and grades 9 through 12, delivered by teachers certified in health. The same regulation requires a separate half-year health course in middle school and an approved half-unit course in high school, which is where most sexual health content lands.

The second is Erin's Law, Chapter 187 of the Laws of 2019, which requires public schools to teach child sexual abuse and exploitation prevention to students from kindergarten through eighth grade. The State Education Department's own guidance on that law says plainly that all curricular programming and instruction are locally determined. Beyond those two requirements, a district in Buffalo, Binghamton or the Bronx decides for itself what its health teachers say about puberty, contraception, relationships or consent, and whether to say anything at all.

Four ways parents can see the curriculum

Start with the AIDS advisory council. Every district must have one under 8 NYCRR 135.3, and the regulation makes it responsible for recommendations on the content, implementation and evaluation of the district's AIDS instruction program. Its membership must include parents, school board members, school staff and community representatives, including representatives of religious organizations. Ask your district office who sits on it, when it last met, and whether it is taking members. A parent seat on that council is the one formal place in state regulation where families help shape this instruction.

Next, ask the school directly. A health teacher or department chair can usually share unit outlines, slide decks and the name of any packaged curriculum the district bought, and many families find that a single email to the teacher answers most questions. If the answer is slow or incomplete, the materials are district records, and New York's Freedom of Information Law lets any resident request them from a school district in writing. The state's open government office explains how to file a FOIL request, and districts designate a records access officer to handle them. The NYCLU built its review the same way, by requesting materials from 50 districts.

Third, watch the board agenda. Curriculum adoptions and health textbook purchases go before the school board, and a parent who speaks during public comment on a curriculum vote is on the record in a way a hallway conversation never is. Our earlier look at what changed in New York schools this year found Albany leaving detail after detail to districts, and sex education is the clearest case of that pattern.

Fourth, know the single opt-out the state guarantees. Under 8 NYCRR 135.3, no student has to receive instruction on the methods of preventing AIDS if a parent or guardian files a written request with the principal, along with an assurance that the student will receive that instruction at home. The right is narrow. It covers prevention methods within the AIDS unit, it requires a written filing and a promise, and it does not reach the rest of the health course. District policies on other topics vary, which is one more reason to get the materials in hand before deciding anything.

What to look for once you have the materials

Read the materials the way the NYCLU did. Check whether health claims carry a source you can verify, whether statistics look plausible against public health data, and whether the curriculum uses shame or fear to make its point. Look for what is missing as closely as for what is there, since four of the 50 districts in the review skipped basic anatomy entirely. If a slide makes a medical claim that surprises you, your child's pediatrician is a fair second opinion, and a respectful note to the teacher that cites the discrepancy tends to move faster than a complaint to the board.

Parents who want the whole picture can also ask how the district trains the teachers who deliver the material, since the regulation ties secondary instruction to teachers certified in health while elementary lessons fall to classroom teachers with many other subjects to cover.

What could change in Albany

The Healthy and Safe Students Act would require age-appropriate, medically accurate and inclusive comprehensive sexuality education from kindergarten through grade 12, with model curricula aligned to national standards. State Senator Julia Salazar carries it in the Senate as S6901A, where it was referred to the Education Committee on Jan 7 of this year, and Assemblymember Jessica Gonzalez-Rojas carries it as A7496A, which sits in the Assembly Education Committee. Neither version has reached a floor vote.

"It's heartbreaking to think of the negative impact this abstinence-only and shame-inducing messaging about sex can have on young people," Salazar told New York Focus. "In New York, we really shouldn't tolerate harmful curricula that, at its worst, is traumatizing young people, but otherwise is not preparing them to be confident and have bodily autonomy and healthy sexuality."

Gonzalez-Rojas pointed to discomfort as the obstacle. "I think there's also sadly still an uncomfortableness with sex, sexuality, and children," she said. "But we might see a lot less sexual assault, rape, and intimate partner violence if young people have the tools early on to understand what consent means and to really grasp it."

Families who have followed state health funding will recognize the terrain from our reporting on the federal cuts to New York's teen pregnancy prevention grants this summer. Until the Legislature acts, the content of your child's health class will be decided by your district, and the advisory council, the FOIL request and the board meeting are the tools the state has given parents to see it and shape it.