Next month will be back-to-school season in Chicago!

Chicago Public Schools (CPS) will be opening the doors of their buildings for the first time since the start of the pandemic. To get school supplies ready and accessible for students, they have started a new program that will stock schools with masks, hand sanitizer, disinfectant wipes, air purifiers, forehead thermometers, menstrual products, AND – last but not least – condoms.

Condoms will be provided to students in grades 5 AND UP. 🙃

Under the new CPS policy, all 600 schools that teach the fifth grade and up will be REQUIRED to maintain condom availability.

To help you with the math here, that means kids as young as 10-years-old will have access to condoms....in 600 schools.

That's about 25,248 fifth graders.

And no, you're not the only one deeply disturbed by this.

One parent named Maria Serrano, whose daughter will be returning as a sophomore in high school in Chicago, works with the grassroots organization Healing to Action and has criticized the new CPS policy.

Serrano told the Chicago Sun-Times that the only reason she even knows about this policy is because of her advocacy work but has not received any communication from CPS as a parent.

"Oh my God, how is it that CPS wants to give condoms to kids?... They are 10 years old, 11, 12. They are kids. So why is CPS thinking about providing condoms? Why not provide them information, and at the end give them the resource of a condom when they are prepared to use those resources they want to provide. For me, this isn't the best option. They are doing things backwards."

Under the new CPS policy, people could argue some of these other products are really unnecessary, like masks and sanitizer.

But condoms?!?!

That really seems to be pushing it.