Simi School, City Officials Support Center for Youths

Simi Valley political and school officials held a summit meeting Thursday and settled on the same notion that teen-agers here have been complaining about for years--there’s not much for them to do.

And what is available to teen-agers is often lost on them because of limited cooperation and communication among the organizations that offer activities, counseling and assistance to youths.

“Even though we think of ourselves as an affluent city, we still have a significant number of children who need assistance.” Ventura County Supervisor Vicky Howard said.

Howard, Simi Valley city and school officials and representatives of the Rancho Simi Recreation and Park District envision development of a drop-in center for youths that would become a clearinghouse for various youth services, activities and classes.

“We do have the facilities in Simi Valley where we could provide one-stop shopping for kids from 1 to 19,” Simi Valley Unified School District Supt. Bob Purvis said.

The proposed center, officials said, would offer job applications, recreation information, counseling, immunization, physical exams, drug and gang awareness programs and other services, and would be loosely modeled after the successful Vaughn Family Center in Pacoima.

The agencies conceded it will take as long as a year to research and plan the facility. On Thursday, they expressed appreciation for the work of two Cal Lutheran University interns who have spent the past two months assessing the needs of city youngsters.

Richard Elias, 19, and Alberto Rios, 22, worked out of Howard’s office for about 10 hours a week compiling data on local teen-agers, concentrating on those in the mid and late teen-age years. And the news was not good.

Their work included a finding that mischievous crimes in the city climbed 100% from 1991 to 1992, at the same time alcohol and marijuana arrests of minors jumped 30%.

Among the teen-agers they spoke with, Elias said there was a feeling that early counseling on how to deal with modern challenges such as drugs and gangs was not readily available until youngsters were experiencing serious problems.

“Kids just want to learn how to be kids,” he said. “To relate to each other and deal with situations like gangs. They would like a teen center, somewhere where they can play basketball.”

A long-anticipated Boys & Girls Club facility that would include a basketball court, weight room and other amenities is still at least two years from being completed, said Becca Merrell, the club’s executive director. And Elias said even that won’t be an answer for the city’s older teen-agers.

“High school teens say that they consider the Boys & Girls Club to be junior high school territory,” he said.

And in addition to frustrations over finding employment in an economy that often keeps college students hanging onto jobs they normally would have vacated, Elias said teen-agers don’t always believe they are supported by local lawmakers.

“Teen-agers said they do not have a lot of representation in the local government,” Elias said. “Planning is not done with any interest in what they want.”

Howard and the other officials hope to change that. The group is looking for volunteers who will pick up where Elias and Rios left off and produce a more in-depth needs assessment for city youths.

That information, they said, will make it much easier to fill the gaps in service and activities.

“We’re all trying to work together to gather this information and to put together better coordination of services, better communication between the groups that deal with children,” Howard said. “I feel we’re making progress.”

The group, which includes Simi Valley school board President Judy Barry, has been meeting for about a year, and in September spearheaded a joint resolution by all of the involved agencies expressing concerns over the level of youth outreach in the city.

The resolution ended with a promise to support all efforts to coordinate youth services in Simi Valley.