OAK PARK : High School to Open Student Union

Although many Oak Park High School students come from affluent families, they share a complaint common to most of their peers, parent Wayne Sterling said: They’re bored and have no place to hang out after school.

Sterling and Oak Park Unified School Board member Jim Kalember hope to ease the boredom with a plan to renovate four portable buildings, now used for storage, into a student union where students will be able to study and socialize.

A student union may also reduce a worrisome problem with alcohol and drug abuse among Oak Park students, Sterling and Kalember said.

“One of the things this community has been screaming about is that there’s no place for the kids to hang,” Kalember said. “That tends to lead to unsavory activities.”

The center will be unique because the students themselves will design and run it, similar to student unions at small colleges, organizers said.

Sterling said the center is scheduled to open this spring.

Sterling said he recently wrote to 20 local corporations for donations to start up the student union and to run it for 90 days. He’s seeking a total of $24,600 to buy equipment--including five computers, a laser printer, two televisions with videocassette recorders, and a laser disc player.

Organizers believe that the student center will ultimately be self-supporting from revenues that it will derive from vending machines and video games.

“The draw is social activity, but the real draw is learning,” Sterling said.

Tutors and even psychologists would be available part time to work with students.

School officials are promoting other after-school activities for the high school’s 530 students. One is a monthly, supervised dance after basketball or football games.

Sterling served on a school district substance-abuse task force that recently drew attention to drug and alcohol problems among Oak Park students. According to the task force’s report, alcohol is widely used by high school and middle school students, sometimes at parties sponsored by parents.

Students said that nearly all weekend parties thrown by high school students involve alcohol and that other drugs are readily available, the report said.