State Representative Adam Niemerg (R-Dieterich) has learned that the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) has filed new Rules with the Secretary of State to be published in the Illinois Register within the next two weeks to adopt the National Sex Education Standards being pushed out. The mandate for Illinois comes from the passage of Senate Bill 818, which was opposed by Rep. Niemerg in the Illinois House of Representatives.
“Illinois law does not mandate that sex education be taught in our public schools but if a school does choose to teach it, they now must follow a one-size-fits-all, extreme, progressive agenda starting in Kindergarten that does not reflect the values of the vast majority of my district,” explained Rep. Adam Niemerg, a father of two young children. “I urge all of the school districts in my area to use their local control rights to opt out of this extreme curriculum on sex education of our children.”
These new rules were approved by the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules (JCAR) in June in a broad rule change pertaining to ISBE Standards for a variety of subjects. JCAR did not object to the Rules apparently because they are aligned with the statutory language in SB 818 stating that ISBE adopt the National Sex Education Standards.
ISBE’s new Rules state: “There are no State Goals for Learning in this area and the applicable standards shall be the National Sex Education Standards: Core Content and Skills, K–12 (Second Edition) (2020) published by Future of Sex Education Initiative posted HERE. No later amendments to or editions of these standards are incorporated by this Section. The State Board of Education may provide additional guidance on such standards, available at www.isbe.net.”