Sip and Paint Fundraiser fun!!!
Thanks to everyone who attended RISE’s Sip and Paint fundraiser on April 12! And special thanks to Jessie Birkeland, Tiffany Sapp, and Tonya Lawrence for dreaming up and organizing this event!
We began the evening with a little information:
In Tennessee if a county’s teen pregnancy rate is less than 19.5 out of 1,000 15- to 17-year-old females, sex ed is NOT required at school districts in that county. (So what happened to 13-, 14-, 18-, and 19-year olds?)
So schools in Washington County currently are not required to teach sex ed.
Kingsport has only one family life educator to cover 11 schools.
And there’s a state law prohibiting instructors and consultants from Introducing information about “gateway sexual activities,” which are not defined in the legislation except as anything that might lead to sexual intercourse, If a parent complains, a consultant can be fined $500/complaint plus actual damages and reasonable attorney’s fees and court costs and charged with a Class C misdemeanor.
But Tennessee has the 9th highest teen pregnancy rate in the country. And teen sexually transmitted infection rates are increasing. Clearly Tennessee’s approach isn’t working.
So that’s the general backdrop for our work.
And while we’d like to think everyone showed up for the info, really the acrylic pours with instruction from Tiffany Sapp were the highlight of the evening!
Take a deep breath and let go!
