Irvine Schools Try Bike Helmet Rule : Safety: District will require elementary students to wear headgear starting in fall if the policy is adopted on a second reading next month. An optional rule, rather than a strict mandate, will be considered then.

Elementary school students in the Irvine Unified School District who bicycle to school will be required to wear helmets starting next fall, the school board unanimously voted late Tuesday.

The district will be the first in Orange County to require student bicyclists to wear helmets to and from school after the board officially adopts the policy with a second vote on Aug. 25. But rather than voting on a policy that strictly mandates compliance, as the board did Tuesday, the trustees on the second reading will consider a more lenient policy giving parents the option of sending their children to school without a helmet.

The Irvine Unified board said it will start the bicycle helmet policy for the 6,500 students in the district’s 21 elementary schools with an eye toward expanding the requirement to higher grades. One middle school will experiment with a helmet requirement next fall to see how older students respond.

“The next step will be encouraging students to use the helmets all the time, not just to and from school,” said Amy Dale, manager of the Orange County Health Care Agency’s childhood injury prevention program. She predicted that the Irvine school district’s action will prompt other districts to follow suit.

Helmets will be available to be loaned to parents unable to afford them for their children. Details of the lending program are still to be worked out.

The school board voted on the helmet policy with no public dissent. Board members, however, said they want the policy as initially proposed--a strict mandate--diluted so parents could exempt their children from the helmet requirement.

When the policy comes up for a second reading on Aug. 25, the board will consider a revised version that adds a sentence allowing parents to opt out if they sign a waiver.

“It seems to me that one of the things we’ve tried to do in this district is to give (parents) choices,” trustee Mary Ellen Hadley said. “The more we tell people that they have to do things, the less support we’ll have in the community.”

District Supt. David E. Brown supported the waiver option to deflate opposition, which Brown said he expects simply because of the policy’s mandatory nature, he said. After hearing that the school board was considering a mandatory helmet rule, one parent called and said he supported the use of bicycle helmets but opposed the idea of a strict order, Brown said.

Parents removing children from the board’s policy will have to meet with a school district official and sign an “informed waiver” of the rule.

“We’re trying to make it difficult,” Brown said Wednesday. “We’re not trying to encourage anyone to (seek a waiver) because we think it’s in the best interest of the kids. But it’s to avoid potential litigation. If there’s someone who feels that strongly about it, they can avoid it.”

Marilyn Vassos, a retired Irvine elementary school teacher and member of a recently disbanded Irvine bicycle safety committee, asked the board to make the helmet rule strictly mandatory.

“It’s a life-and-death policy,” Vassos said.

Allowing parents to avoid the requirement “takes the whole meat out of the policy,” she said. “It’s like saying: ‘We think it’s a good idea, but it’s really not all that important.’ ”

But Hadley said she favored an optional helmet policy. Forcing parents to send their children to school with a bicycle helmet will prompt some to argue against the strict rule, which will teach children the wrong message about helmet use, Hadley said.