EXCLUSIVE: Washington state's biggest school district, which is in the middle of a financial crisis caused by plummeting student enrollments, has traded words like "female" and "male" for "person with a vagina" and "person with sperm" in its sexual health education courses for elementary school children.
Students as young as 9 at Seattle Public Schools (SPS) will begin their sexual health education curriculum on April 24, according to Seattle Public Schools training materials, which were obtained by Fox News Digital through a public records request. According to an SPS presentation for elementary school educators for the 2022-2023 school year, the curriculum aims to reduce "gender stereotypes" and "heteronormativity," or the idea that heterosexuality is normal.
"Actively dismantling toxic masculinity," is a key tenet of the school district’s approach toward sexual health education, according to the training materials.
As part of the "Family Life and Sexual Health" (FLASH) curriculum, which was developed by the Public Health Department of Seattle and King County, SPS encourages educators to "use inclusive language" and "get comfortable with using They/Them pronouns" in most situations.
The lessons for 4th grade students are rife with gender-neutral language to describe males and female when it comes to anatomy, pregnancy and the reproductive system. For instance, 4th graders are told that "vaginal sex is a common way that people get pregnant," and that "babies with a penis are born with a sleeve of skin on the penis called the foreskin."
SPS lessons for fourth grade teaches students that there are more than two genders, often using the phrase "all genders" to describe people. They are also taught about the anatomy of a "person’s uterus" and how a "person ovulates."
"Sometimes people get pregnant without having vaginal sex," a fourth-grade lesson on the reproductive system states. "Sometime egg and sperm cells meet in a laboratory, where the egg is fertilized, and then a doctor puts the fertilized egg in a person’s uterus to implant and begin a pregnancy."
The lessons also talk about hormone treatments and puberty blockers for transgender people.
"Some people decide, with the help of their doctor, to take medicine or hormones to change puberty on purpose to better match their gender," a fourtth-grade lesson on puberty states. "They might take medicine that interferes with hormones so puberty changes don’t happen at all. Or, they might take medicine made of hormones so that they have specific changes."
"People of all genders experience very similar changes during puberty, including cisgender, transgender, and nonbinary people, and those who don’t identify with any gender," another lesson for fourth graders states.
The curriculum is the result of a law passed in Washington in 2020 that required all public schools to provide comprehensive sexual health education to all students by the 2022–2023 school year.
Children in fourth grade also received a lesson on the Black Lives Matter movement on Jan. 30, according to the materials obtained by Fox News Digital, and many schools in the district celebrated the union-endorsed Black Lives Matter at Schools Week of Action (BLMSWA) last month.
BLMSWA focuses on the "13 Guiding Principles of the Black Lives Matter movement," which include "fostering a queer-affirming network" by freeing an individual from the "tight grip of heteronormative thinking" and "disrupting the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure."
BLMSWA is endorsed by the county's major teachers' unions, including the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association.
Meanwhile, SPS announced earlier this month that some staff members were notified they may lose their jobs to address a $131 million budget deficit caused, in part, by rising labor costs.
The Center Square reported in January that Diversity, Equity and Inclusion employees are among the highest paid at SPS, raking in upwards of $200,000 a year.
Another issue is the downward trend of enrollment in the district. SPS lost more than 3,500 students since the pandemic and expects to lose another 3,000 by the 2025-2026 school year, according to data from the district. If that happens, it will mark a 12.5% decrease in enrollment over six years.
SPS did not respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment.
