PORTLAND (AP) – An organization that teaches a sex education course promoting abstinence isn’t finding much interest in public schools.

A year after Heritage of Maine won a $1.5 million federal grant to launch the program, the nonprofit is finding success in religious schools and youth groups. Getting into public school classrooms has been more difficult, however.

So far, Heritage of Maine has taught parts of the program in a handful of public school districts. But those schools don’t want to be identified for fear of being targeted by outside groups opposed to the approach.

“When you are forging a new trail, it is not necessarily easy,” said Mary Schiavoni, president of the organization.

Schiavoni says the resistance is frustrating at a time when the number of teenagers infected with sexually transmitted diseases is rising.

But the state health and education departments say the message of abstinence until marriage doesn’t work.

“Studies show over and over again when youth are given full information, including abstinence, they make the healthiest choices possible,” said Dr. Dora Anne Mills, the state’s public health director.

Heritage began to approach school districts last summer. The group is receiving $500,000 annually for three years from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to promote abstinence until marriage among 12- to 18-year-olds.

Its program is designed for schools and is free. So far, the group has taught its eight-hour course in two public school districts and at the Long Creek Youth Development Center. It has spent some time teaching in three additional districts.

The course focuses on changing the behavior of teenagers by building their character.

Scarborough rejected the program despite complaints about its current sex education program, which includes a demonstration of the proper way to use a condom. Heritage volunteered to teach part of its course at the town’s middle school, and some parents want the proposal to be considered.

But Heritage was rebuffed.

“It is not appropriate in our minds for use in public school,” said William Michaud, superintendent of schools.

The Maine Department of Education in the 1980s decided to take a comprehensive approach to sex education, including requiring that students learn about contraception. The approach was put into law in 2002.

Health officials credit the sex education curriculum with Maine having one of the largest decreases among states in the teen pregnancy rate over the last 25 years.

The rate in 1980 was 70.5 pregnancies per 1,000 15- to 19-year-old females. It had fallen to 35.4 pregnancies per 1,000 by 2003, the latest figure available from the Maine Bureau of Health.

Health officials add that the number of Maine teenagers having sex is declining. They say sexually transmitted infections are increasing partly because of improved health care and testing methods.

For her part, Schiavoni is determined to bring the Heritage program to more public schools and overcome what she says is an unwillingness by state officials and school districts to take a new approach to sex education.

“We are here to work with Maine,” Schiavoni said. “These are federal dollars. There should be a collaborative effort.”

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Information from: Portland Press Herald, https://www.pressherald.com

AP-ES-09-06-05 1119EDT