School Bingo Fund-Raising Plan Raises Ire

Oh, we’ve got trouble. Right here in this city. With a capital T, and that rhymes with B which stands for BINGO.

Like the River City, Iowa, folks who lamented the evils of pool in “The Music Man,” some local parents fear that a plan to bring bingo to area high schools is sending the wrong message to their children.

Led by a high school PTA president, the newly formed Parents Against Lotteries in Schools (PALS) draws the support of groups ranging from leaders of the local Mormon community to the Long Beach Area Citizens Involved watchdog group. They are questioning the appropriateness of financing education through gambling, and plan to raise the issue with the school board.

“I perceive it as a moral problem,” explained one of the bingo critics, Robert Brown, father of five. Two of his children attend Polytechnic High School.

The message he sees bingo sending to youths is: “You’re getting something for nothing . . . Life is a free ride and you can gamble your way to success.”

Maggie Hackett, Polytechnic High School PTA president, who is spearheading the anti-bingo effort, said: “How can we expect to educate our youths about values, when this attitude of compromise dominates our school district and our community?”

Booster clubs at the five high schools in the Long Beach Unified School District want bingo games to help pay for their children’s extracurricular activities, including sports teams, music groups and academic organizations.

So far, only Lakewood High has begun the weekly games, which, according to booster club treasurer Sally Farnham, are generating about $2,900 in profits each week. Wilson High parents hope to be passing out bingo cards by the end of January, and booster clubs at the other three high schools are continuing to work on similar events.

Booster club members are seeking additional sources of revenue because the district’s funding of extracurricular activities has not kept up with cost increases or the growth in various teams and organizations. This year, for example, the district’s high schools added ninth-graders to their ranks, and girls’ sports teams continue to grow in popularity, increasing the need for more money.

Besides, supporters point out, schools already are profiting from the state lottery. And schools in Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego and Ventura counties subsidize sports and other activities with bingo.

“I don’t think their lives have turned to wreck and ruin because they have bingo,” said Mary Kay Toumajian, a parent at Wilson High who is coordinating that schools’ bingo efforts.

Booster club members said they understand the concerns of bingo opponents. Most said they wished they did not have to resort to gambling. But Long Beach residents should be open to innovative ideas, they said.

“This is not a little one-house school in the middle of Kansas. Churches have bingo. Jewish centers have bingo. Other organizations have bingo,” said Paul Williams, a booster club member at Millikan High School.

The brewing debate poses a dilemma for the majority of school board members. Most said they oppose the concept of bingo in the high schools, but understand the need for fund-raising activities. One member described bingo as “an unfortunate necessity.”

Board President Jenny Oropeza said, “Bingo does bother me. I’m really torn. But I haven’t sensed an overwhelming desire on the part of my colleagues to bring it up, and I haven’t heard a large clamor from the community either.”

Wilson parent Toumajian and Lakewood High activities director James Wickman said they have not heard about opposition from parents.

Hackett said she hopes to change that. So far, she has collected about 300 signatures on petitions to school and city officials.

Rabbi Sidney Guthman, a Long Beach resident who leads Congregation Shalom in Seal Beach, said he signed the petition because “handling our educational problems through this device of gambling . . . sets a poor example for the children and for adults.”

While gaining support from diverse places, Hackett acknowledged she will face opposition from parents who see bingo as the best way to help their children involved in extracurricular activities. Hackett said she won’t even seek the help of her own PTA because “it would divide the Poly PTA.”

At the first meeting last week of Parents Against Lotteries in Schools, Durand F. Jacobs, a Loma Linda Medical School professor who wrote a book about teen-age gambling and children of problem gamblers, warned that “there’s a dark side to what appears to be free money.”

Gambling among teen-agers is increasing and society is blind to it, in the same way it did not see the abuse of alcohol as a disease 40 or 50 years ago, said Jacobs, president of the California State Psychological Assn.

“More and more people are using gambling not as a means of recreation but as a means of supporting what used to be paid for by taxation,” Jacobs told the gathering of about 20 people.

Poly High parent Robert Ward agreed. “Having gambling funding education--if that doesn’t hit you in the guts, then you have a problem,” he said. He represents about 3,500 Long Beach Mormons as the president of one of the church’s stakes, or districts, in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

“The money has to come from somewhere,” retorted Millikan booster club member Williams, who attended the meeting. Williams, an attorney, is helping to organize the Millikan bingo games.

And therein lies another problem. If not bingo, then what?

“If we could find some other source of funding, I would be willing to switch from bingo to something else,” Toumajian said.

Hackett and other bingo opponents acknowledge that they do not have all the answers. They suggest a citywide effort to coordinate other types of fund-raising but have not suggested a specific alternative.

“One of the alternatives is to publicize the need for communitywide support of extracurricular activities and to get business support,” said Alan Lowenthal, president of the 800-member Long Beach Area Citizens Involved.

Some bingo opponents said they are worried about being pressured into helping with the bingo games. Wickman said, however, that participation at Lakewood High “is totally voluntary.”

Bingo opponents also complained that their children, who now must contribute to their clubs by participating in candy sales, car washes and the like, would now get a free ride. Toumajian said the bingo sales will finance up to 70% of an organization’s needs, leaving students to come up with the rest of the money needed to pay for uniforms, equipment and trips.