Dickson County Schools Approves Human Trafficking Lessons for All Grade Levels

Dickson, TN — Dickson County Schools will provide age-appropriate human-trafficking awareness and prevention instruction to students in kindergarten through twelfth grade beginning in the 2026–27 school year.

The Dickson County Board of Education approved the district’s implementation plan during its July 23 meeting. The plan was developed in response to a new Tennessee law requiring public school districts to provide trafficking-prevention education at every grade level.

Under the law, local boards of education were required to adopt an implementation plan by August 1.

District officials said the instruction will be tailored to students’ ages and aligned with Tennessee health education standards.

At the elementary level, where students generally do not attend separate health classes, school counselors will present the material. The topics will differ by grade level and will be incorporated into the counselors’ existing lessons.

Students in sixth, seventh and eighth grades will receive the instruction through their health classes. Officials noted that some of the required subjects are already included in the district’s middle-school curriculum.

In ninth grade, human-trafficking awareness will be taught as a separate unit from the district’s family-life curriculum. Officials said state law requires the two subjects to remain separate.

The district also developed a plan to provide annual instruction to students in grades ten through twelve. Because students generally complete their high school health requirement in ninth grade, the district must use other opportunities to reach older students each year.

District officials said the curriculum will focus on helping students recognize warning signs, understand potentially dangerous situations and know how to seek help. The content provided to younger students will be designed differently from the material presented in middle and high school.

The human-trafficking plan was added to the board’s agenda at the beginning of the meeting. Although there was initially some discussion about whether formal approval was necessary, the board’s attorney noted that the law required the board to adopt an implementation plan.

The board then approved the curriculum without opposition.