Parents Picket as Officials Discuss AIDS Education Law

As Ventura County public school officials met in Camarillo on Thursday to find ways to implement a new state law mandating AIDS education, a conservative parents group led an angry protest against such efforts.

Members of the Coalition for Family Values, picketing outside the meeting at a Camarillo community center, said sex education and AIDS education are the responsibility of parents alone, not teachers.

“We are calling on parents not to expose their children to these programs,” said Jack Kocienski, one of 15 protesters. “This is so serious that it would be better to remove children from the schools.”

The group, which Kocienski said was formed in response to the AIDS education law, criticized the Ventura County chapter of Planned Parenthood, which assists school districts with their sex education programs.

“Planned Parenthood’s primary goals are to promote promiscuity and encourage abortion, and now we are giving them access to our children in public schools,” Kocienski said. “You take away a child’s innocence when you start talking about these things.”

But officials of the county superintendent of schools office said the group is overreacting.

The law, which Gov. Pete Wilson signed in October, mandates that a trained team of educators, counselors and parents teach students in junior and senior high schools about acquired immune deficiency syndrome. On Thursday, nearly 80 teachers, administrators and students from various districts, along with members of Planned Parenthood, discussed how they will implement the law during the 1992-93 school year.

“We’re not making policy here,” said James F. Cowan, county superintendent of schools. “This is just the opening session to get information about the law.”

Under the law, parents can request that their children be allowed to leave class during discussions about sex and AIDS, officials said.

Cowan defended Planned Parenthood, saying it provides information about AIDS that school officials would have difficulty getting from other sources.

He also denied that the AIDS education effort will promote promiscuity. “Abstinence is in every part of the program,” Cowan said.

Most of the school districts in the county already offer some type of AIDS education. The Oxnard Elementary School District has proposed distributing condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS among sexually active junior high school students.

The law, sponsored by Assemblywoman Teresa P. Hughes (D-Los Angeles), requires schools to offer students at least two seminars on AIDS. The law also requires that districts provide AIDS prevention instruction to all teachers and staff.

Officials said meetings such as the one Thursday will give administrators an opportunity to review the programs now in place and coordinate efforts countywide.

Members of the Coalition for Family Values were not allowed to attend Thursday’s meeting because school officials said they would only confuse the process.

They stood outside for nearly two hours, carrying protest signs with slogans urging chastity and criticizing Planned Parenthood.

“Schools are here to teach reading, writing and arithmetic,” said Patricia Polley, the mother of seven children. “They’ve just gone beyond their boundaries. This is a very, very private, personal issue.”