Teacher Strike : Malls Warn Idle Students to Stay Away

San Fernando Valley shopping malls resembled school halls Tuesday: Neither had many students in them.

Teen-agers who ditched strikebound classes in hopes of hanging out at their favorite neighborhood gathering places discovered that mall operators were not happy to see them.

Shopping center security officers patrolled the aisles warning students that school truancy laws were in effect, strike or no strike.

“As we find them, we kick them out,” said Bob Brody, assistant general manager of the Sherman Oaks Galleria. “We tell them, ‘You’re supposed to be in school,’ and they say, ‘But there’s a strike,’ and we say, ‘You’re supposed to be in school anyway. You have to leave.’ ”

Video Screens Off

Los Angeles police were stationed at the entrances to the Panorama Mall in Panorama City to deliver the same message. Inside, operators of the Nintendo electronic games sales booth said they switched off their video display screens to avoid attracting youngsters who might have slipped in.

Few seemed to have done that. “We saw the cops on the doors and went home,” said 16-year-old Sergio Camarena, an 11th-grader at Van Nuys High School.

The Los Angeles Police Department assigns a full-time, two-man foot patrol to the Van Nuys Boulevard mall and checking on truants “is part of their job,” said Police Lt. Robert Swanson.

Mall security guards at Topanga Plaza, across the street from Canoga Park High School, walked through their shopping center in pairs to remind teen-agers that truancy laws were in effect until 3 p.m., one officer said.

Normally More Traffic

“On a normal day when kids are out of school, we have more traffic,” said John Lyda, regional director for center management for May Centers, owner of Topanga Plaza.

At Northridge Fashion Center, security officers did the same thing.

“We told them they were truant and in 15 minutes we’d start escorting those under 16 back to their schools,” said Ken Oswald, general manager. He said the mall’s popular game arcade took the precaution of checking the identification of those who looked younger than that.

As a result, the shopping center had “no big roving bands” of teen-agers, he said.

There were smaller bands of striking teachers roaming the Northridge mall, however. Some, such as a group from Beachy Avenue School in Pacoima, were attired in matching school shirts. Like the youngsters, teachers admitted that they were there to kill time.

“We’re between picketing,” said Lea Hoffman, a San Jose Street School first-grade teacher. “We thought we’d stop in to see what the real world was like.”

Kindergarten teacher Teri Gross said she and four other striking San Jose Street instructors chipped in to buy lottery tickets while at the mall. If they win tonight’s $20-million jackpot, “we’ll split it and and have a lot of fun spending it,” she said.

Got Message

By midday, most teen-agers had apparently gotten the message. “There were none in our food court at noon,” said Kay Behrens, general manager of Fallbrook Mall in West Hills. “I think they probably went to fast-food hangouts instead.”

That’s where Greg Tan and his friends ended up.

“We got together at Carl’s Jr. and then went to the Granada Hills Bowling Alley to play video games,” said Tan, a 17-year-old 11th-grader who strolled out of San Fernando High School after spending several “boring” hours Tuesday morning reading automotive magazines in the campus library.

“The day was a waste,” Tan said. “Maybe tomorrow we’ll go to the beach.”