Teen Center Kept Alive Despite Concerns

On bicycles or on foot, or with moms and dads driving Jaguars and Cadillacs, they came to the small, dark auditorium Saturday night. A deejay played records full blast and skinny young teen-agers, all gyrating hips and flailing arms, threw their bodies against the wall of music.

Suddenly, the auditorium at the La Canada Elementary School was empty. They had migrated outside like a flock of restless birds to perch on the railing of the school walkway, the girls giggling into each other’s necks, the boys pretending they weren’t watching the girls.

Behind the school, groups of boys and girls, carefully and consciously segregated, clustered together, only to break and scatter across the playground, dancing and talking and laughing their way through another Saturday night.

It’s not exactly what the La Canada Flintridge City Council had in mind when it came up with a plan for a teen center last October, but council members and local parents have come to accept it.

Supervision Questions

But even though the council recently voted to continue the pilot program to the end of the budget year, parents and council members still have some questions about the level of supervision, the city’s liability and the teen center’s responsibility to surrounding neighbors.

Club Nine, funded by the city and run by the Parks and Recreation Commission, is a music and dance program organized to provide junior high and high school students with a drug- and alcohol-free place to socialize on Saturday nights.

When the center started, the commission provided refreshments and had a tightly structured plan for games, sports, movies and other events. After balls were lost, a scoreboard was broken, sodas were sprayed all over the gym and teens just stopped showing up, the leaders realized that all the kids really wanted was to dance and hang out.

“Everything in their lives is structured,” said David Hargrave, a Parks and Recreation commissioner. “They have to get up and be at school at a certain time. They have sports and dance classes. This is one place where they can go and just hang out.”

Originally, the program had a strict sign-in policy and didn’t allow teens to leave once they entered the auditorium. The program was later changed to a loosely structured get-together with dancing and music, and teen-agers started coming again.

Attendance now varies widely, with a record of 150 and several nights when no one showed up. The average turnout is 35 or 40.

Sign-Ins Scrapped

Now that the commission has scrapped the sign-in policy and softened rules about leaving, teens are allowed to come and go as they please. A high school student deejay spins records in a pitch-black gymnasium, and seventh- and eighth-graders wander in and out, dancing and roller-skating and giggling together in small, tight clusters. Four young adults, called recreation leaders, are on hand to supervise, but they have little, if any, authority.

“No one ever really told us what we could and couldn’t do,” said Diana Zaslaw, a senior at Occidental College and teen center recreation leader. “We really have no authority. We can’t say don’t leave.”

Zaslaw and three other recreation leaders, the oldest of whom is 22, are at Club Nine every Saturday to offer at least a minimum of supervision. But some City Council members say they aren’t comfortable with young teen-agers being given that kind of freedom.

“The whole council feels there should be some kind of control,” Councilman Chris Valente said. “I just don’t feel that kids should be let out of a car and parents think they’re going into the gym, and maybe they don’t go. If we’re going to create this atmosphere, we’ve got to supervise it.”

“I guess you have to wear two hats, one as a parent and one as a council member,” Councilman Ed Phelps said.

“Putting on my parenting hat, I think I would want more supervision. I question whether I would be willing to drop off a child and let them have free rein. I might as well just unlock the front door and say, ‘Have a good time, see you at ten.’ ”

Parental Concerns

Minutes from Parks and Recreation meetings show that some parents are concerned about the lack of supervision and feel the program should be more controlled. But other parents say the answer lies in a good relationship between parent and child, and not in excessive supervision by the city.

“I know that my daughter’s trustworthy,” Joe Hancock, who has a daughter in the eighth grade, said when he went to pick her up at Club Nine on Saturday. “When she says she’s going to be someplace, she’ll be there. I know when I drop her off here, I can pick her up here.”

And while some parents and council members feel more adult supervision is called for, teen-agers say they don’t want mom and dad hanging around and pouring punch. Katy Daunis, Parks and Recreation coordinator, said the commission decided to let a committee of students make their own rules and police the program themselves.

The teen committee, five students at La Canada High School, get together every Tuesday with adult leaders and plan activities for the center.

Ginny Jones, a teen committee member and a seventh-grader, said that if rules are tightened, the teen-agers will not come. “You can’t have too many rules,” Jones said. “When we had to sign in, everyone felt like we were entering prison. People just put down fake phone numbers. If the rules are started up again, people will just stop coming.”

Liability Issue

As rules became more relaxed, some parents and council members were concerned that the city would be liable if teen-agers left the facility and were injured.

But Deputy City Atty. Stephanie Scher said that as long as the facility is safe and parents understand that the program is operating with an open-door policy, the city probably would not be liable in an accident.

“It’s no different than when someone drops their child off at a public park,” Scher said. “If you drop your child off at a park for a Little League game, does the city have an obligation to guarantee that the child is actually playing ball? And the answer is no.”

Valente disagreed. “If you put on something and you sponsor it, you’re going to be named in the lawsuit,” he said. “Look at when people leave bars and have accidents. Don’t they always come back and sue the bar?”

Recreation leaders said the Parks and Recreation Commission has stressed from the start of the program that the teen center isn’t a baby-sitting service for La Canada parents. Daunis said the city has made it clear that neither recreation leaders nor the city are responsible for the teen-agers.

To help ease worries about liability, the commission sent a letter to parents last January, notifying them that they had to pick up their children by closing time and asking parents to help control the teen-agers’ behavior.

Angry Neighbors

Although no serious problems have occurred at the teen center, there have been a few run-ins with frustrated neighbors angered by loud music and teen-agers running around their property.

Sheriff’s deputies have responded to complaints on three occasions, but in each instance, teen-agers were quieted and neighbors were soothed without much trouble.

In March, 20 to 30 teen-agers did not want to watch the scheduled movies or play games--they just wanted to hang out at the front of the building. When they refused to go back inside, one of the supervisors called the Sheriff’s Department and six deputies came by to march the teen-agers to a pay phone and make them call their parents.

“If kids start hanging around outside, there are going to be problems,” Valente said. “A hundred yards away are people’s homes. Don’t you think we owe something to them?”

The city calls the teen center an experiment. The Parks and Recreation commissioners are working their way through a trial process, but Daunis thinks parents and the city are generally satisfied with the program. And teen-agers applaud the relaxed controls and looser structure of Club Nine, saying that no real problems have cropped up despite the looser supervision.

“Everyone thought we were bad at first,” Jones said. “But we’re not. The fun we have here is innocent.”