Judge Rejects Five Key Points in Schools Suit

A judge this week dismissed five key arguments of a lawsuit filed by a parents’ group over the Capistrano Unified School District’s use of Project Self-Esteem, a program aimed at boosting the self-confidence of elementary school children.

Claims that the program violated students’ religious and privacy rights and that it constituted unauthorized psychological treatment of schoolchildren were summarily dismissed late Thursday by Superior Court Judge Robert H. Green on a motion filed by the district’s counsel, Ron Wenkart, a senior attorney with the Orange County Department of Education.

Two remaining issues--whether the program may be administered by volunteers and whether it must be formally adopted as a part of the district’s elementary school curriculum--will be decided when the lawsuit is heard, probably in late February, Wenkart said. “The other five were the major issues that could have stopped the program--these two can’t hurt us that much,” he said.

Early last year, the school district began using the elementary-level Project Self-Esteem which, Wenkart said, “lays the groundwork for our anti-drug-and-alcohol program” in junior high and high school. Some parents spoke out sharply against the program at several school board meetings, and the parents’ committee filed suit in June.

Rigo Lopez of Mission Viejo, a member of the Capistrano Parents Committee for Academic Freedom, the group suing the district, said he was “disappointed but not surprised” at the judge’s ruling.

“I felt the judge would not have made such a decision without all of the evidence,” said Lopez, the father of two elementary school children. “But I’m not surprised. In our educational system . . . what is being taught is humanism, and evidently the judge can’t see that.”