BURBANK : Schools Working on AIDS Curriculum

The Burbank chapter of the American Red Cross will buy $8,500 worth of textbooks on AIDS to help the Burbank school district meet a state law requiring instruction about the disease, officials said Wednesday.

“Most of our health books are so old that they don’t include AIDS education,” said Andrea Canady, director of curriculum development for the Burbank Unified School District on Wednesday. High school textbooks, which are newer, include only two paragraphs about acquired immune deficiency syndrome.

The state law requiring the AIDS instruction went into effect last year, but the state board of education has yet to adopt the framework that publishers would use to incorporate instruction into textbooks. The Burbank school district is drawing up its own curriculum, which is to be presented to the school board in June and, if approved, incorporated into health classes for middle school and high school students in September, Canady said.

“This is the kind of curriculum we would want them to look at carefully because it is a controversial subject,” Canady said.

The board of directors of the local Red Cross voted last week to use money from its youth services budget for the donation, said Gay Weston, executive director of the chapter. The Red Cross will buy the books after the district selects the texts. The Red Cross will also give the district instructional videos about the disease.

Every health teacher in the middle schools and high schools already teaches at least several days of instruction on AIDS, Canady said. A standard curriculum and textbooks are needed help ensure uniformity.