Sex education is a required class in city public schools, but City Council members are concerned that many students are not getting the instruction they need.

Middle- and high-school students are supposed to be taught at schools about sex. The city has required sex education since 2011. But nobody has been keeping track of whether schools are actually teaching it.

"Ever since sex education was first introduced in city schools, implementation has been a problem," said City Councilman Daniel Dromm of Queens.

It's a problem NY1 first exposed last June after speaking with students from dozens of high schools who said they received little to no sex ed.   

On Tuesday, the City Council discussed three bills that would require the Department of Education to track, and publicly report, whether the schools are teaching sex ed, and how.

"Someone needs to be held accountable. Someone needs to be held responsible," said City Councilman Corey Johnson of Manhattan.

Dr. Roger Platt, the head of school health at the Department of Education, testified that 25 pecent of students report having had sex by ninth grade and 60 percent by high school graduation. He says 4,000 girls under 18 become pregnant each year, almost all unintentionally. Still, he says there has been progress. In 1995, more than 13,000 girls in this group became pregnant.

"We're seeing far lower rates of positive pregnancy tests in schools where our reproductive health programs have been fully adopted," Platt said.

Although teenage pregnancy rates may be down, it is still disproportionately a problem in low-income neighborhoods. Officials also revealed that sexually transmitted disease rates are up - and by a lot - among teenagers in the city. Particularly, chlamydia.

Dromm: It seems to me that there's a crisis going on. Would you describe it as that?
Platt: Well, it's certainly a very large number, yes.
Dromm: And obviously, additional education would help to reduce those numbers.
Platt: I certainly would support additional education.

City Council members say they'd like age-appropriate sex ed to be taught starting in elementary school. For now, they'll settle for just getting information on whether it's being taught at all.