For years, Gretna Public Schools Superintendent Kevin Riley knew there had to be a better way to teach kids about sex.

The education they were getting in school was ineffective. Good kids continued to make bad decisions.

Teenage girls were getting pregnant. Girls and boys were getting sexually transmitted diseases, some with lifetime — and life-threatening — effects.

They made fun of sex ed classes, said they were silly, stupid. Was showing kids how to put a condom on a banana going to keep them safe from becoming parents at 14? From getting diseases that could make it harder to have children when the time was right?

“Our kids want to know the truth,” Riley said.

Enter Shelly Donahue, a striking figure — 6-foot-3 in her stocking feet, 6-foot-6 in heels — standing there, telling them that if they want to grow up to be healthy adults they need to save sex for marriage. They need to be free to pursue careers, to have lives with no heartaches. Teaching them about why they respond like they do to sex. The differences between boys and girls. What sex is and what it isn’t.

Donahue has been all over Nebraska, carrying the message of abstinence to kids, parents, teachers, counselors, school nurses, administrators, college students. It is the message of WAIT — Why Am I Tempted? — Training, a Denver-based nonprofit health and education organization that aims its message at whole communities.

She is direct, asks if kids are happy or upset after sex, if they understand its purpose. She offers them a chance at “renewed virginity.” She tells them how to say no.

She reveals the secrets of oxytocin, the love hormone, how it bonds a female to a male during intercourse. She tells them the effect is strongest in females, that it lessens over time.

She tells them the people they have sex with now are someone else’s future spouses and asks them what they want from their husbands or wives down the road.

Kids respond like Riley has never seen, he said.

“Some of the things girls and boys have written to Shelly are real eye-openers for us,” he said. “Kids’ feedback is very clear to us.”

They say: Please come back. Our generation has to hear this. We’re confused. We don’t know what to do.

They say they are disappointed in themselves, feel horrible about what they have done but that her message has changed them.

Their responses show they are getting the point, Riley said, intellectually, socially, physiologically, emotionally.

“It’s being reinforced that there’s a better way.”

Gretna, Donahue said, has been the best model of saturating a community, teaching not only kids but also teachers, parents and the faith-based community.

In public schools, she said, the message is nonsectarian.

The abstinence program is one  of several that communities in Nebraska have adopted, said Linda Henningsen, the state adolescent health coordinator and administrator of Nebraska’s abstinence grant.

WAIT Training meets the requirements set up for such a program by the federal government in order to receive a piece of its financial grant. Nebraska school nurses have been trained in the program for about 10 years.

“The school nurses loved it,” Henningsen said. “It gave them tools to talk about relationships and appropriate boundaries.”

The best results come when the entire community is trained, she said, so everyone is using the same language. It’s not faith-based, Henningsen said, although there is a version for churches.

Donahue knows she can’t give a faith-based message under Nebraska’s abstinence education rules.

“We’re adamant about that,” Henningsen said.

She said the program is not going to be effective with all kids. But for some, it raises the bar, gives them a standard they can reach.

Adolescents don’t have the brain development to make logical, consistent decisions, she said. This gives them some skills to use.

One of the issues with sex education is that there is not one world view; there are many views, Henningsen said.

“The biggest challenge with educating kids about abstinence is telling them what it is — and what it isn’t.”

Lynn Kocian, a physician assistant at Gretna’s family health clinic, is on board with the program because it educates parents.

“There’s a whole generation of parents who are not educated in these things,” she said. “It’s such a hush-hush thing.”

Parents are naïve, Kocian said. They leave kids undersupervised. But with WAIT Training, they are getting better. They are calling each other, networking.

The program has made an impact on kids, too.

“At least they are hesitating.”

Reach JoAnne Young at 473-7228 or jyoung@journalstar.com.