Senate Bill 5395 was passed by the Legislature and Washington voters in 2020 and went into effect on December 3, 2020. It requires all public schools to provide comprehensive sexual health education by the 2022–23 school year, with some requirements beginning in the 2020-21 school year.As part of Washington State’s mandatory curriculum policy, the Pe Ell School has adopted a Comprehensive Sex Education curriculum. This has been a process that has encompassed many months of collaboration for the school.

First, in mid-school year 2022 there was a committee assembled consisting of five educators, two school board members and three community members. This group met to review numerous curriculums taking into advisement what other local schools were using as their curriculums. Samples of the curriculums were obtained and reviewed by the committee and a decision was reached to recommend the FLASH curriculum as the choice for our school.

Next, the curriculum was presented to the school board and recommended this as the choice for Pe Ell. After this recommendation the committee met once again to determine what lessons from the curriculum would be used in the school. Samples of the curriculum were placed out for viewing during Parent/Teacher conferences in November with an option for comment from the community.

Finally, the responses were brought back to the school board and reviewed. In January of 2023, the school board adopted FLASH as Comprehensive Sex Education curriculum for the Pe Ell School. This curriculum will be utilized for grades 4-12. Students in grades K-3 will have lessons provided focusing on SEL (Social Emotional Learning). Parents may elect to opt their children out of this instruction using the form included in the website below. Pe Ell School will only use the lessons listed on this page. Lesson delivery will begin in 2022 after staff training and preparation.

For questions regarding this curriculum and its implementation, please contact your child's school.