Board Favors Easy Access to Condoms : Schools: Testimony by students sways trustees, who had planned to put a counselor in charge of distribution.

The Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District has scrapped plans to have a specially trained counselor in charge of distributing condoms, and instead intends to make condoms available to high school students with as little fuss as possible.

School board members had favored the counselor method in order to give students the opportunity to ask questions and to remind students that sexual abstinence provides the best protection of all against unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease.

But after listening to emotional testimony from students at Monday’s meeting, the board members softened their position.

“I’m here to tell you that young people are having sex,” said Santa Monica High School junior Maya Harris. “I don’t want to see a test saying HIV-positive. I don’t want to see any more of my peers get pregnant.”

Harris was one of 10 students who spoke in favor of an obstacle-free distribution system. Most students, they maintained, would be embarrassed to talk to a counselor and would not take advantage of the program.

Even the strongest supporters for the counselor method were swayed.

“I’ve had to rethink what I felt was the appropriate educational component,” board member Peggy Lyons said. “I’m getting more lenient by the day as I listen to the students.”

School board members expressed relief this week that preliminary agreement could be reached on the condom policy with so little rancor.

At Los Angeles Unified School District board meetings, for example, parents, activists and religious leaders hurled insults at each other and argued heatedly over the rights and wrongs of passing out condoms before a policy was arrived at last month.

“I think everybody was surprised at the level of consensus to move forward on this,” said Connie Jenkins, president of the Santa Monica-Malibu board. “People are ready to deal with this. It’s beyond an issue of morality. It’s a matter of life and death.”

Not a single person has spoken out at a board meeting against passing out condoms. At this point, Jenkins said, even if objections are raised, the board is likely to formally adopt its policy on March 9. No vote was taken on the matter Monday, but the six board members present praised the proposed draft.

The board took up the issue cautiously in the beginning. When the first draft policy came up for discussion at the end of January, its text was not released to the public because it was “too premature.”

The board waited, instead, until the district nurses had a chance to study the policy and make their recommendations.

The policy was made public for the first time Monday. Two other groups that were asked for their input--the school district’s health advisory committee and the PTA Council--voiced strong support for the policy at the meeting.

Even board member Michael Hill, who is holding out for free condoms out of a help-yourself fishbowl, was happy with the progress.

“I am beside myself with elation on how fast the board has moved on this,” he said.

The draft policy states that condom distribution will be part of a broader program that includes classroom instruction about AIDS and its prevention. The program stresses abstinence as the best way to avoid sexually transmitted diseases.

The policy calls for condoms to be handed out with a pamphlet explaining how they are used and reiterating the warning that they are not 100% effective for protecting against disease or preventing pregnancy.

Distribution is to begin as soon as the board approves the pamphlet and as soon as parents are notified of the program. Parents will be given an opportunity to send the district a letter barring their child from getting condoms from school.

Jenkins said she thought condom distribution could start in April.

As part of the policy, a team of parents, teachers and district staff will be set up to oversee the condom distribution and instruction about AIDS, or acquired immune deficiency syndrome. Among the team’s duties will be to see that the program includes adequate parent outreach and peer counseling, and provides students with the most up-to-date information about AIDS and AIDS prevention.

Board members still disagree over some issues, such as whether the condoms should be free. According to Hill, the condoms can be obtained from Los Angeles County, which purchases them in bulk for less than five cents each.

Several students recommended charging for them. Students would value the condoms more if they paid for them, they said, adding that such a policy would help keep the condoms from being used as water balloons and volleyballs.

Board members also have to work out a way to safeguard the privacy of students. Under the policy, a student requesting condoms would have to be identified in some manner to show that the individual’s parents have not rejected participation in the program.

Some students said requiring a name could deter some participants.

“If I want to have sex with a girl, and she wants to have sex with me, why do you have to know my name?” asked 14-year-old Costa Karras. “It’s none of your business.”

Adoption of the policy would put the Santa Monica-Malibu district on a schedule similar to that of the Los Angeles Unified School District. In that district, an oversight committee is working on an implementation plan for the policy adopted in January, according to Beverly Martin, an administrative consultant in the office of LAUSD Deputy Supt. Sid Thompson.

Condoms at Los Angeles’ high schools could be available sometime in March, he said.