Grand Canyon Times

The Arizona Department of Education (AZDOE) urged the Arizona School Counselors Association (AzSCA) to stop a workshop that includes a section on counseling sexually active minors and "aiding a student to get an abortion."

"Educators should not be put between parents and children," a spokesperson for AZDOE told the Grand Canyon Times. 

That statement followed a tweet from the the department that said, "we encourage the Arizona counselors association to stop this immediately. If any parent or student hears about this happening in their school, please contact the Empower Hotline and your school board. #InParentsWeTrust."

That tweet was in response to a tweet by the group Arizona Women of Action, which shared details of the AzSCA workshop, including a screenshot of a section titled "School Counselors and Sexually Active Students." The screenshot says that during the workshop, counselors will participate in use case scenarios to "explore and demystify some of the legal complexities of counseling sexually active minors in schools," including "aiding a student to get an abortion." 

The AzSCA, an organization that provides resources and networking for members of the profession, is hosting the virtual workshop, called "The Legal and Ethical Complications of Working with Minors in Schools," on June 20 and 21. The event description says, "The school environment poses competing interests between a student’s need for confidentiality and the legal rights of parents, as established by the U.S. Supreme Court, to be the guiding voice in their children’s lives in value-laden issues."

The workshop will be hosted by Dr. Carolyn Stone, the chair of the American School Counselor's Association Ethics Committee and a professor at the University of North Florida.

In September 2012, Stone authored on article for "ASCA School Counselor Magazine" in which she wrote that school policies that require school counselors to notify parents about their children's pregnancy are "too drastic," "misguided," and eliminate "the educators’ discretion to do complex work with sexually active students."

An AZDOE spokesperson told the Grand Canyon Times the department "does not have a partnership with AzSCA" and "does not support the contents of that workshop."