Wichita ? As the State Board of Education debates guidelines for teaching students about sex, a Wichita organization has received a $770,800 federal grant to teach premarital abstinence to area youth.

Abstinence Education Inc. will use funding from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to support programs designed to lower teen pregnancy rates and prevent sexually transmitted diseases.

“I feel like I just got engaged and I’ve got this big wedding to plan,” said Sandy Pickett, project director for Abstinence Education. “We couldn’t do anything until we had the funding.”

The grass-roots organization’s “Pure and Simple” program targets the 12-to-18 age range and can be used in Sedgwick and McPherson county schools, churches, community centers and youth organizations.

Pickett’s group has been around since 1997, offering programs ranging from anatomy and fertility “appreciation” to teaching self-control.

The grant will pay the organization’s staff and 46 college-age coaches to teach high school students how to give abstinence presentations.

Pickett said the money also will be used to develop the curriculum, print materials and T-shirts, and pay mileage and other expenses.

Kansas Department of Health and Environment officials said federal funding for such programs cannot be faith-based or focus on contraceptive use.

The State Board of Education has yet to decide whether to require school districts to offer sex education classes only to students whose parents opt into them, rather than the current practice of allowing students to avoid the classes if their parents request their children be kept out of them.

Critics of the abstinence-only program say it doesn’t address the fact that students already are having sex and should also be instructed on ways to avoid pregnancy and disease.

“Many teenagers are sexually active, and to not include programming that supports proper use of contraceptives would be counterproductive,” said Jerry Schultz, associate director for the Work Group for Community Health and Development at Kansas University.

Pickett said she believes the just opposite.

“Our approach is from a primary prevention risk-elimination approach,” she said. “If you aren’t sexually active, you don’t have to worry about pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases and the emotional consequences of any of that baggage.”

Pickett said Abstinence Education will recruit health care providers and other leaders to promote the program. She said the system also could be tailored to specific neighborhoods and ethnic groups.