NATCHEZ — When Natchez High School student Michael Cleveland glossed over data on teenage pregnancies in Mississippi from a packet titled “House Bill 999,” his reaction was telling.

“I thought it was higher than that,” Cleveland scoffed, casually.

A 2010 study shows Mississippi has the highest number of teenage pregnancies — 55 for every 1,000 births.

A bar graph in the same packet reveals that approximately 60 percent of students in Mississippi are sexually active.

Cleveland, who will be a senior in August, guessed the percentage of students having sex was closer to 80 percent.

Angel Brooks, who will be a junior at NHS in the fall, estimated more conservatively. She said she felt certain it was safe to say more than half of her peers have had sex.

The students said the only exposure they’ve had at school to any type of sex education is textbook lessons in health class about sexually transmitted diseases.

Cleveland, Brooks and rising senior Whitney Jackson all said they were unaware of the new state law aimed at reducing teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, though their classmates will surely be exposed to it next year when sitting through either an “abstinence-only” or “abstinence-plus” class.

The NASD school board votes Thursday about which policy the district will use.

The three students read the guidelines for both policies. Abstinence only teaches that abstinence is the only sure way to prevent unwanted pregnancy and STDs. The policy also allows schools to teach some or all of a number of other subjects, such as the effectiveness and risks of contraception use, the social consequences of teenage pregnancy and skills to deal with unwanted advances, including the role of alcohol and drug use. Abstinence-plus makes it mandatory that those subjects and others be taught in school.

All three students said independently that they thought abstinence-plus would be more effective.

All three went further to agree that limiting sex education to the fact that abstinence is the only sure way to prevent unwanted pregnancy and STDs would be completely ineffective.