The Benton Harbor Area Schools board is considering new sexual education programs after hearing some troubling statistics about the district's students.
Russell Lardie, Benton Harbor High School's physical education and health teacher, told the school board this week that Benton Harbor's teen pregnancy rate is three times the state average and is 50 percent higher than Detroit's.
One in three of the school district's students who are tested for sexually transmitted infections are testing positive, Lardie said.
Board Trustee Jeffrey Booker was careful to point out during the Tuesday meeting that the statistic didn't mean one in three high school students were testing positive for STIs, but that one in three students who are tested at the high school's on-site clinic are testing positive. Lardie said that, according to a survey of the school district's freshmen and juniors, 67 percent are sexually active and, of those, 17 percent were sexually active before they turned 13.
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