Ventura School District Tunes Out Radio Peer Counseling

A program to provide teen-age peer counseling over the radio hit a snag Thursday when a Ventura County school district, worried about liability, pulled its students from the show.

The decision by officials from the Conejo Valley Unified School District to withdraw its five students from a pool of 20 teen-age hosts came shortly before a news conference to publicize “A Safe Place,” set to debut Dec. 11 at 8 a.m. on KNJO-FM (92.7).

Carol Erie, Conejo’s director of secondary education, said the district is concerned that it might be held liable if teen-age hosts are sued for dispensing poor advice to their peers.

But Ronald Bara, a therapist and co-creator of the program, said the show will be broadcast using students from schools in Las Virgenes Unified School District in Los Angeles County and Oak Park Unified School District in Ventura County, despite the Conejo Valley district’s action.

Screening Process

The show will feature telephone calls from teen-agers who want to talk with their peers about problems, Bara said. A licensed therapist will screen calls, weeding out callers with serious problems, such as suicidal tendencies, that teen hosts cannot handle, Bara said.

Erie criticized the show’s creators for failing to obtain the school district’s permission to recruit students from Thousand Oaks and Westlake high schools. She said a news release issued by the show’s creators suggested that the program had been sanctioned by the district.

But Bara said he never intended to imply that the radio program had been officially sanctioned by any school district.

“What we have here is a lack of communication,” Bara said. “Someone in the school district obviously panicked about liability. But it’s an overblown concern that we have already dealt with by screening the calls.”

Peter Turpel, general manager of KNJO-FM, said the station is not concerned because it insures its public affairs programs against lawsuits brought by listeners.

Turpel said “A Safe Place” will begin and end with a disclaimer to inform the audience that the teen-age hosts are not licensed therapists. Lawsuits against talk show hosts are generally unsuccessful, Turpel said.

In 1980, a $250,000 damage suit against talk show host Toni Gale Grant and radio station KABC was dismissed in Los Angeles Superior Court. The suit had maintained that Grant upset a nursing mother so much that she stopped lactating, which was claimed to have retarded her infant son’s speech development.

Officials from the Las Virgenes and Oak Park school districts said they are not worried about their liability and have no plans to withdraw students from the radio show.

“We think the show is a great idea and are proud that one of our kids was chosen to host it,” said Joseph Nardo, principal of Lindero Canyon Middle School in Agoura Hills.