Students offered birth control

CHARLESTON -- A Charleston County parent and her 14-year-old daughter were spending some quality time together one Sunday evening when the conversation turned to sex.

She asked her daughter whether she was sexually active, and the Burke High School freshman surprised her with the news that she had sex once. After a few minutes of silence, the mother told her daughter she wanted to call the family doctor and arrange for her to go on birth control.

This time, her daughter's response came as an even bigger surprise: a woman at school had taken her to a clinic for a shot that would provide birth control for three months. The mother, whose name is being withheld to protect her daughter's identity, said she hadn't been informed.

"It floored me," the mother said. "Flabbergasted. Outraged."

She said her daughter was taken to the clinic by someone who worked for Carolina Empowerment Group, a nonprofit community organization whose goal is to increase awareness of and prevent teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, HIV/AIDS and substance abuse. The group has an office at Burke High and access to students, but the school district doesn't pay for its services.

The mother wondered about what would've happened if her daughter had an allergic reaction to the shot or the woman had gotten into a traffic accident. She doesn't understand why she wasn't told that this was going to happen or how it's OK for her daughter to be taken off campus by a stranger.

"If I weren't close to my child, I would've never known," the mother said. "If I weren't a mom who takes time to talk to her daughter, I wouldn't know anything. I just don't understand how this happens without anyone finding anything wrong with this."

State law permits health services to be provided to minors of any age without parental consent when it's deemed necessary, but it forbids contraceptives to be distributed on school property. Carolina Empowerment's mission is to provide sexual education to teens and adults, and part of that is connecting people to the services they need, said Clay Middleton, chairman of the nonprofit's board of directors.

The nonprofit doesn't remove students from classes for appointments, but it will use staff members' vehicles to drive students to clinics after school or give them a voucher to take a public bus, he said.

He didn't know how many times the nonprofit staff had brought teenagers from school to clinics for birth control, but he said that's not out of the norm.

If the clinic were downtown, students easily could walk or take a bus. But the clinics are on Johns Island and in North Charleston, he said.

Although the incident happened after school and didn't involve school staff, the nonprofit's agreement with the district obligates it to follow its rules. If a school employee had been the one to drive the student to the clinic, school district attorney John Emerson said that wouldn't have been acceptable and disciplinary action might have followed.

The district's policy allows employees to use private vehicles for transportation to and from school-sponsored events only with the superintendent's permission, and the board doesn't encourage the use of private vehicles unless it's considered essential.

District leaders planned to let the nonprofit know that this operating practice wasn't OK and shouldn't happen again, Emerson said. He didn't see any legal issue because the birth control services are permitted by law and the district's policy didn't prohibit this situation explicitly. The nonprofit still will be permitted to operate in the school and provide students with information.

Burke High appears to be the only school in the county where an organization dedicated to sexual education has office space. With the blessing of top district leaders, the school's principal, Charles Benton, signed an agreement with the nonprofit's executive director and Middleton last year setting the guidelines of their partnership. Before last year, another nonprofit aimed at preventing teen pregnancies, It's Up to Me, had occupied office space in the school.

Benton was unaware that the group was driving students from the school to health clinics, and he said he's not OK with that scenario nor was that supposed to happen. Still, he said the services provided by the nonprofit were valuable because the surrounding community has a high rate of teen pregnancy.