BARCC’s Statement on the 2023 Comprehensive Health and Physical Education Curriculum Framework

We are proud that the Healey-Driscoll Administration has taken this bold step forward toward implementing these new standards.

The Boston Area Rape Crisis Center (BARCC) applauds Governor Maura Healey and the administration in announcing the new framework for comprehensive health and physical education for Massachusetts students. As a long-time partner with the Healthy Youth Act Coalition and advocate for healthy relationship and consent education, we view LGBTQ+-inclusive, medically-accurate, and developmentally- and age-appropriate sex and relationship education as critical to our mission of ending sexual violence.

In the health curriculum framework revision process that began in 2018, BARCC has offered insights from current research and from working with survivors and communities every day. The previous framework, last revised in 1999, focused on risk-reduction and placed responsibility on survivors in ways that could be ineffective and retraumatizing. The framework taught students it was their responsibility to stop the violence that others were inflicting on them. 

The focus has shifted to reducing risk factors for abusing others, and engaging the community and individual bystanders in preventing violence and promoting health and safety. These strategies are both trauma-informed and more effective at preventing violence. The framework offers “a more deliberate integration of skills for personal safety, maintaining personal boundaries, and child sexual abuse prevention through a trauma-informed lens. The standards help students to understand that abuse is never their fault, and that trauma is something that people may experience but does not define who they are.” 

Furthermore, the inclusion of the LGBTQ+ perspective is an important step towards addressing cultures of homophobia and transphobia that make schools unsafe environments for many LGBTQ+ youth. The framework discusses bullying, dating violence, respect for one another and how to make informed choices regarding relationships, in the context of LGBTQ+ and heteronormative perspectives, allowing all students to see themselves reflected in the curricula.

We are proud that the Healey-Driscoll Administration has taken this bold step forward toward implementing these new standards. We are grateful for the hard work of partners like health teachers, P.E. teachers, administrators, and other community health organizations who have worked tirelessly over the last decade to advocate for comprehensive sex and healthy relationship education for young people. 

BARCC encourages community members to read the frameworks and provide public comment, and share the document and survey with others, particularly youth and folks from marginalized communities, so that the public comment process will be as equitable and inclusive as possible.

BARCC also remains strongly committed to supporting the passage of the Healthy Youth Act, which is necessary to ensure that the right of students to receive medically accurate and developmentally appropriate sex education is enshrined in statute—more powerful and binding than the guidelines.