School Board Vote Seeks Cheaper Prom Options

High school students should find cheaper alternatives to the $1,000-a-night prom, but don’t trade that tux for a uniform.

That was the message Monday from the Los Angeles Board of Education, which addressed the outbreak of complaints over expensive high school proms, and a separate controversy over authorizing an Air Force Junior ROTC unit at Granada Hills High School.

The board unanimously passed a resolution by East San Fernando Valley representative Roberta Weintraub, instructing high schools to appoint committees of students and parents to study ways to hold down the cost of senior proms and also to suggest less expensive alternatives to the annual spring dances. The committees are to send delegates to a meeting in January to draw up recommendations for action by the board.

The board also killed the Junior ROTC request after Board President Rita Walters lashed out at the program as militaristic, complaining that blacks and Latinos died in disproportionate numbers in Vietnam.

For several weeks, Weintraub has been campaigning against luxurious and expensive trappings at proms. These range from holding proms in expensive hotel ballrooms instead of the once-traditional gym, to limousines, hotel rooms for post-prom parties, designer dresses, professional makeup and hairdressing sessions. And even helicopters.

Dan Isaacs, a school district administrator, told the board that a random sampling of students at four high schools--Locke, North Hollywood, Roosevelt and University--found that the average price of a prom ticket was $86, and that the average couple spent $724 on a prom.

Weintraub told the board that parents are going into debt to finance prom expenses. She said parents among her constituents have complained that they oppose lavish, all-night proms, but that peer pressure is so intense they cannot forbid their children to attend.

Weintraub argued that students kept away from proms by the high cost “may suffer possible psychological or emotional damage.”

Artis Slipsager of Studio City, president of a coalition of 154 PTAs in the San Fernando Valley, told the board her group backs Weintraub. “The-sky’s-the-limit-attitude of so many of our youth and their parents has contributed to a situation we feel is out of control,” said Slipsager, who said she has two sons at North Hollywood High School.

Three members of Army Junior ROTC--Reserve Officers’ Training Corps--from other high schools and a representative of the Reseda Chamber of Commerce appeared to encourage the board to approve a grant of $41,000 needed to launch an Air Force program at Granada Hills High School.

Such programs exist at 23 of the district’s 49 high schools, including seven in the Valley. Participants wear uniforms on days when there are Junior ROTC activities, hold ranks and learn military customs and history. The military denies that the program is a recruiting tool, saying that only about 1% of students join after graduation.

West Valley representative Julie Korenstein, Weintraub, and board member Alan Gershman praised the program. Gershman said it offers a constructive alternative to gangs for many minority teen-agers and “is more like scouting than the military.” He appealed to other members not to let military stereotypes influence them.

Walters, however, criticized the program as a “militaristic organization” which she said attracts only minority youths, with almost no Anglo participation.

“In the history of Vietnam, black and brown men were killed out of all proportion because it was the first integrated war, where minorities had the quote-unquote privilege of being front-line soldiers,” she said.