Schools Debate the Merits of Condom Distribution

If Los Angeles school board member Jeff Horton has his way, students on the district’s 121 junior and senior high campuses will soon be able to drop by the school nurse’s office, plunk a quarter in a vending machine and walk off with a condom.

If his colleague Barbara Boudreaux prevails, condoms will be taboo on campus and discussion of AIDS--and the role condoms can play in slowing the spread of the deadly disease--will be relegated to a few lessons in junior- and senior-high health classes.

Their widely divergent views mirror the extremes of the often-emotional debate over how far schools ought to go in teaching students about AIDS.

Following the lead of other big-city districts such as New York and Philadelphia--and emboldened by Magic Johnson’s recent public vow to talk to youngsters about safe sex--Los Angeles Unified School District officials are considering a controversial plan that would broaden the district’s AIDS education efforts to allow high school students access to condoms on campus.

Mindful of a new state law requiring every school district to teach its students how to prevent AIDS, educators around California are watching to see how Los Angeles--viewed as a leader in AIDS education--deals with the subject of condom distribution and the thorny issues of teen-age morality, parental control and the legal liability it invokes.

“This is one of the more emotional issues school districts have to deal with,” said D. J. Peterson, who coordinates AIDS education programs for the state Department of Education.

“You’ve got some very vocal groups on both sides of the issue. And in the middle, not really being heard, are concerned parents who just want the schools to . . . teach kids what they need to know,” he said.

Until recently, AIDS education had been stalled in many districts “because there’s so much fear among community members about what’s being taught that they have a hard time agreeing on anything,” according to Peterson.

But beginning next fall, all public school students in California must be taught in junior high and again in senior high how the virus that causes AIDS is transmitted, how it affects the body, how to reduce the risk of contracting it, and where to be tested or treated.

The law requires that lessons emphasize abstinence as the only sure-fire way to avoid infection, but also mandates that students be told about condoms and other methods that reduce the risk of contracting the AIDS virus. Parents can opt to have their children skip the classes if they object to the material.

Already about half the state’s 1,000 school districts provide AIDS prevention classes, with parents notified in advance. But they vary widely in their approaches and content.

Most address AIDS in health or science classes, lumping it in with venereal diseases or other communicable illnesses such as tuberculosis. The lessons range from cursory medical explanations of how the virus spreads, to emotional visits from AIDS patients. Some teachers refuse to use the word condom in class, while others go so far as to display samples and explain how they should be worn.

In some school systems, including San Diego Unified, children begin learning about AIDS in first grade, where teachers try to alleviate youngsters’ fears of catching the virus through the air, teach them to avoid hypodermic needles they might find on the street or in the trash, and stress compassionate treatment of people who are sick. Sexual relationships are discussed in the sixth grade.

And in Ventura County’s Oxnard Elementary School District, where information on AIDS is introduced as early as kindergarten, one district trustee--disturbed by reports that several fifth-grade girls had become pregnant--has proposed making condoms available to elementary students. A committee of parents and teachers will review that suggestion early next year.

Other districts, such as San Marcos Unified in San Diego County, steer clear of talk about condoms, preferring a strict “abstinence curriculum” that begins in elementary school and teaches children how to say “no” to teen-age sex.

“We think abstinence is a viable choice, that’s it’s possible for kids to abstain,” said Assistant Supt. Joe DeDiminicantanio. “In some districts, they spend 30 seconds talking about abstinence and two weeks talking about birth-control techniques. What’s the message the kids take from that?”

Los Angeles Unified, the nation’s second-largest school district, devotes about two weeks to AIDS in the 20-week health courses offered in seventh and 10th grades. In about half of its 417 elementary schools, AIDS is discussed in family life and sex education courses given in fifth or sixth grades.

District health teachers get special training on AIDS prevention--funded by a grant from the Centers for Disease Control--but officials concede it is difficult to standardize AIDS instruction. Most health teachers are sports coaches, who are accustomed to talking about first aid and personal hygiene, not sexual practices and morality.

“Even though something’s in the curriculum, if the teachers don’t feel comfortable with it, they don’t spend a lot of attention on it. They just gloss over it,” said Janis Burgess, an adviser for the district’s senior high schools.

In most districts, few parents have objected to the lessons on AIDS; fewer than 5% across the state have taken the option to pull their children from the classes. But the prospect of condoms being handed out on campuses has raised the stakes in the debate over AIDS education, turning it into a battle between high-profile activists on both sides.

When Marin County’s Tamalpais High last year became the only school in the state--and perhaps the nation--to allow students to have condoms without parental permission, a lawsuit by parents aligned with a statewide conservative religious group persuaded the school board to scrap the plan before the first condom was handed out.

Meanwhile, militant AIDS activists have begun descending on campuses in Los Angeles and Orange counties, passing out free condoms to high school students to dramatize the risk the youngsters face from unprotected sex.

“The whole thing is turning into a political issue, rather than a decision based on what’s going on in the schools and what we need to do to save kids,” contends L.A. Unified’s Burgess.

Even the AIDS Education Task Force, which last spring first proposed condom distribution by L.A. Unified schools, has come under attack, with critics complaining that its membership was stacked with gay and lesbian activists who commandeered group meetings and tailored the report to reflect their views.

The task force, created by the school board two years ago to evaluate the district’s AIDS education efforts, included medical experts, educators, gay and lesbian community leaders, parents and health-service providers. But almost immediately it was embroiled in controversy: some physician members dropped out, parents complained that their concerns were being ignored, and representatives of conservative religious groups forced the district to include them on the panel.

The group recommended making condoms available to students without parental permission on all junior and senior high campuses, teaching children earlier and more explicitly about ways to prevent the spread of the AIDS virus, targeting gay youths for additional prevention efforts, and exploring a policy to extend district-paid medical insurance to the partners of gay employees.

“Most of the people whose names appear on that report never saw those final recommendations and had nothing to do with them,” charged Marci Farrington-Delgado, a Roosevelt High counselor who chaired the task force’s curriculum subcommittee. “The report was written by five people who had their own agenda and made that clear from the very beginning.”

The report also engendered outrage among religious leaders, who launched an attack as vigorous as their campaign three years ago to stop the district from opening high school health clinics that would dispense contraceptives. Those efforts failed to persuade board members to drop the privately funded clinic program, which offers a wide range of basic health services.

The district now sponsors three campus clinics, which make condoms available to students who have parental permission to be examined at the centers. Of the 3,300 students who visited the clinics last year, fewer than 200 were given condoms.

Anticipating widespread controversy over the task force report, the school board convened a series of community meetings this fall to field questions from parents. But they turned into screaming matches between gay and religious activists.

Catholic churches ferried busloads of their parishioners to the sessions to denounce the condom proposal, while gay activists showed up en masse with picket signs and placards supporting it. Speakers, including the private physicians who had been invited to answer questions, were often hooted down by opposing factions.

“What we had hoped for was to get some feedback from the community, but I don’t think the regular parents had a chance to get to the microphone to make their feelings known,” said School Board President Warren Furutani.

As a result, it is unclear how most parents in the district feel about distributing condoms at school. The school board will discuss the proposal next month, with a vote on all of the task force’s recommendations tentatively set for Jan. 20.

Some board members are polling students to determine whether they see a need to distribute condoms on campus.

Tracy Cohen, a Granada Hills High senior and the school board’s current student representative, said most of her classmates favor making condoms available on campus.

“There’s a division among students, but most of the ones I’ve talked to think it’s a good idea because you wouldn’t just get handed a condom, like you would if you bought one at a drugstore, but you’d get an education about how to use it,” she said.

“Ever since Magic Johnson (announced he is HIV-positive), students have been a lot more aware of the risks of sex,” she added. “It’s hit home for the first time that it could affect us.”

Gay activists--the proponents of the condom-distribution proposal, so far--contend it would save the lives of countless teen-agers.

The Centers for Disease Control estimates that 20% of all HIV-infected Americans are teen-agers, and experts say the rate of infection among teen-agers is growing rapidly. In Los Angeles County, however, teen-agers represent only a tiny portion of the AIDS cases recorded since 1981, when the county began keeping track. Of the 13,647 AIDS cases reported here, only 31 have been among youths age 13 to 19.

Religious leaders argue that the condom issue raises questions of morality, not just public health. They contend that by passing out condoms, the district would be promoting teen-age promiscuity and undermining parental control.

“It’s not the school board’s responsibility to make these kinds of choices for our children,” contends Susan Carpenter-McMillan, a spokeswoman for the Right-to-Life League of Southern California. “What if a condom breaks and a child gets AIDS? Is the school board going to take responsibility for that?

“Here’s a district that can’t even afford pencils and paper for its students and they’re talking about giving condoms away.”

Although there is no price tag on the condom plan, district officials acknowledge it would be expensive to implement even a portion of the task force’s package of proposals.

New York, which last month became the first major school district to dispense condoms without parental consent, funded its program with more than $600,000 in private contributions to help develop curriculum and pay for teacher training. Condoms were donated by the manufacturers.

At each of New York City’s 120 high schools, condoms will be available from a teacher or other staff member in a special health resource room for at least 10 hours each week. Each school must appoint a panel of teachers, parents and students to monitor the program. They must also sponsor education sessions for parents and provide at least six lessons in AIDS prevention for pupils each year.

As in Los Angeles, the New York plan came under heavy fire from the religious community. But unlike here, the number of teen-agers infected with the AIDS virus in New York was increasing too rapidly to be ignored. With both the city’s mayor and school superintendent supporting the proposal, it was approved by the school board, on a 4-3 vote, in September. Since then, one board member who opposes the plan has sued the district to block it.

Horton, who has been the most outspoken proponent of the condom plan on the Los Angeles board, favors a program similar to New York’s--one which leaves implementation up to local schools. But to maximize access and protect the anonymity of students, he wants the condoms dispensed from vending machines.

“Parental permission sounds good, but it misses the point,” Horton contends. “Very few young people who are sexually active have their parents’ permission to do so, so they’re not going to get a note from their parents. That means the very kids who would need (condoms), we wouldn’t be able to reach.”

Staff writers Henry Chu and David Smollar and correspondent Patrick McCartney contributed to this story.