Sex education is a required course for middle and high school students in the city, but it seems many schools have decided to skip the class. NY1's Lindsey Christ filed this report.

City students should be learning about the birds and the bees. It's been a requirement since 2011 that all public middle and high schools teach all students sex education. That's not what's happening. 

"There are schools out there with no sex ed going on at all and that's a huge disservice to those students," says community health organizer Wadezah McCullough of the Montefiore school clinic. 

It's a story you hear a version of at many schools. 

"They don't have that at my school. I never took the class, and I'm a senior, so..." says one student at Life Sciences Secondary School in Manhattan. 

"Most teens are misinformed or not informed at all," says another student at Brooklyn Tech High School.

"I really wouldn't call it sex education because were not learning anything much that we should be learning in high school about sex," says a student at Marie Curie High School in the Bronx. 

A Department of Education spokesperson says the department requires "rigorous health education, which includes topics on sexual health."

The department doesn't actually check with schools to see if they're doing it, however.

"If there's a mandate, then there should be accountability. The chancellor should set regulations around it. There should be a evaluation around this mandate," says Haydee Morales of Planned Parenthood of NYC. 

The Women's City Club of New York, a public policy group, recently formed a task force on sex ed in city schools. They'd assumed the Department of Education had data.

"We tried to get that information to find out what is being taught and when and where, and it's been very frustrating, because unfortunately there's not a lot out there. Records are not being kept," says Amy Schwartz of the Women's City Club of NY. 

They're now pushing the City Council to pass a law requiring the Department of Education to track whether schools are actually teaching sex education, and the chairman of the City Council education committee, Danny Dromm, told us he plans to hold a hearing in the fall. 

The issue came up at a recent City Council budget hearing, when a councilwoman said some schools aren't complying with the mandate. Schools Chancellor Carmen Farina replied that sex ed is, "alive and well".

"It is there. It is a mandate. If there are schools that aren't doing it, that's something we will look into," says Chancellor Carmen Fariña.

That's exactly what advocates and researchers say her department is not doing, though.