By MADDY VITALE
Sexually explicit material available to fourth grade students in a health class at the Ocean City Intermediate School has prompted a local mother to take her concerns to the Board of Education.
School officials said that they are aware of the incident and that they have discussed it with the teacher and Intermediate School Principal Michael Mattina to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
Ocean City mother Laura Wheeler said she was shocked when her 10-year-old son, who is in the fourth-grade, came home and asked her what “a wet dream was.”
“I told my son he was not old enough to need to know about that yet, and I asked him why he was asking me,” Wheeler told the school board during a Nov. 16 meeting. “He told me that he had an assignment in health class today, and when he was researching the website, he and his whole class read all about puberty and other kinds of gross and weird stuff.”
When Wheeler clicked on the website https://kidshealth.org/ she found out that the information was “endless.”
“No one in the class went rogue and left the main site,” she explained to the school board. “It took three clicks to get to this information.”
Wheeler did attempt to opt her son out of the health class earlier in the school year, but she was assured by the health teacher that the sexual content would not be taught to the fourth graders this year.
To read a portion of Wheeler’s statement click here:
https://ocnjdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Laura-Wheeler-Statement-on-Health-Class-.pdf
Ocean City Interim Schools Superintendent Dr. Scott McCartney addressed Wheeler’s concerns during the Nov. 16 meeting.
When asked for further comment by either himself or Principal Mattina, McCartney said in an email this week, “Typically, we do not bring the principal in for comment on this. A district response is more appropriate.”
He limited his remarks to those made at the meeting.
When responding to Wheeler’s remarks at the meeting, McCartney said that the lesson on the school website during the fourth grade health class was a “hospital/doctor developed website.
The student portion of the site had a “range of topics” and this particular health class lesson was designed “as a substitute lesson if the teacher wasn’t there,” he explained.
But because students were able to freely access information on numerous subjects, the district created a plan to ensure there are safeguards in place, McCartney said.
McCartney also said that if a teacher wants to use websites, they have two options: either students should be directed to specific areas to click on for their lesson or the teacher should print articles out for students to read.
He emphasized that Wheeler’s concerns were “valid points” and that they were “real concerns.”
McCartney further stated that while the district’s job is to be proactive, there are times when it can be difficult to control what can be viewed online.
He noted that in this case, the district is being “reactive” to the incident and created a process that would hopefully keep something like this from happening again.
“We are always looking proactively to make sure we are respectful for all of our students and parents,” he said.
For more information about the Ocean City School District, visit oceancityschools.org.
