Dropped School Drug Counseling Program Revived : Education: After spurning state funding in flap over birth control, Saddleback district will pay for it, limit discussion topics.

School district officials, who last week dropped a state-funded drug counseling program because it might offer family planning, have come up with $15,300 to revive the program under their own terms.

By reaching into its own coffers, the Saddleback Valley Unified School District will return the program to all five high schools through the end of the school year. But the topics of discussion will be drug and alcohol abuse--not birth control or abortion counseling.

“Make no mistake, we do care about these students,” district Supt. Peter Hartman said. “They did make meaningful, touching statements to keep this program, but we were also working very hard to save the program.”

The Medi-Cal funded program pays for Orange County Health Care Agency drug counselors to visit 36 school campuses across the county. The program also allows minors age 12 and older to receive counseling about abortion and birth control, without parental consent.

When district officials learned about the family planning services, they barred the program from campuses.

But students still could go to a Medi-Cal office in Laguna Hills to fill out the monthly forms for continued eligibility. In practice, only a few students could reach that office, mostly because of transportation problems, county officials said.

As a result, student enrollment declined, causing the county to lose about $14,000 a month as it attempted to continue providing the counseling. Unable to continue sending counselors to the schools without cost, the county reluctantly pulled the program which was serving about 150 students.

Carrie Lucas, an El Toro High School senior, said she had been “pretty worried about not having counseling. I used to look forward to going to counseling every Tuesday, and now I haven’t gone for a couple weeks.

“I missed talking with Kate (Pavich, a county drug counselor),” she said. “I think it’s great that the program is back.”

But Hartman stressed that the reprieve is only temporary. District officials say they will meet with Medi-Cal policy makers in Sacramento to try to set up a plan that allows drug counseling on campus in the future without access to other services. Medi-Cal officials, however, have said that proposal would violate state law requiring that a range of services, including counseling for venereal disease, drugs and family planning, be available to minors without parental knowledge.

The Saddleback district laid off 18 counselors in 1983 and has never been able to replace them because of deep cuts in school funding. Without them, the district had only the noontime counseling program offered by Medi-Cal.

In a memo dated April 29 to board members, Hartman commended the County Health Care Agency for agreeing to send back its counselors to the schools at a rate that is half of the usual charge.

“What saved the (drug counseling) program temporarily is that we’re coming to the end of the school year,” Hartman said. “It would cost $100,000 to $150,000 over a full year and we couldn’t afford that.”

Board member Frank L. Ury--who has been critical of additional school spending in the past--said he supports paying the $15,300 for the counselors.

“We need to go ahead and meet the students’ demand in this case,” Ury said. “By doing this, we have shown our complete support for this program.”

But some criticized the district for moving against a valuable program that was fully funded by the state in the first place, especially in such tough economic times.

“The program was funded by Medi-Cal; it wasn’t coming out of the school budget,” said Patti Whaley, a parent at El Toro High School. “If Medi-Cal is going to cover it, it should. The program is a need in this community.”