Taking a Gamble That Grads Will Play It Safe

GRAD NITE: A sports club complete with a pool and bowling alley will be the site of South High School’s all-night graduation revelry. Many Torrance High School seniors will party until 5 a.m. on a yacht cruise in Los Angeles Harbor. And in Palos Verdes Peninsula High’s gym, Peninsula and Rancho Del Mar High graduates

will celebrate surrounded by movie sets with backdrops from Hollywood films and enjoy casino games, live entertainment, food and prizes.

At many South Bay high schools, parents and administrators have come up with creative ways to keep graduating seniors off the streets and away from alcohol and drugs on grad night. Traditionally, the grad night celebration meant students piling into cars and driving to Disneyland, while parents worried about drunk drivers.

“But that got really old,” said Jo Scudamore, one of the organizers of the Peninsula grad night party. “Most of these kids have already been to Disneyland.”

Scudamore said students will not be allowed to leave the Peninsula party without permission from a parent volunteer at the event. The volunteer will call the student’s parents to let them know their child is on the way home or ready to be picked up.

“The whole idea is to keep them safe and sound,” Scudamore said.

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ART AWARD: A pencil drawing the artist described as “a young man trying to save his best friend,” captured a first-place award and $325 for Bobby Lane of San Pedro Senior High.

Lane’s work, titled “Helpless,” was judged the best of the 450 entries in the 12th annual “Expressing Feelings Through Art” competition, sponsored by the Los Angeles County Mental Health Assn. The mental health agency also presented a check for the same amount to the San Pedro High School art department.

“Helpless,” and 40 other paintings, drawings and photographs will be on display at the Watts Towers Arts Center, 1727 E. 107th St., Los Angeles, through June 30. Lane, 18, plans to begin studying art at Marymount College in Rancho Palos Verdes in the fall.

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APPEAL FAILS: A state appellate court has upheld a lower court’s dismissal of a lawsuit filed by a group of residents who charged that the Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District trustees improperly waived developer fees for their friends and associates.

The Court of Appeal sided with a superior court judge’s ruling two years ago that the school board trustees had done nothing wrong by issuing waivers for developer fees and lease payments amounting to about $2 million. Such waivers are within the board’s discretion, Superior Court Judge John Zebrowski ruled in dismissing the suit, which was filed in 1988.

“I considered it a nuisance suit from the outset,” said school board president Jeff Younggren, one of the defendants. “I never feared for the allegations because I thought they were unfounded and that everybody was doing the best they could at the time.”

But Janet McAuley, one of two Peninsula residents who filed the suit, said: “This was a win for politicians and developers. The taxpayers and the schools lost.”

McAuley’s suit stemmed from the 1986 lease, and subsequent sale, of surplus land that was to be the site for a high school that never was built. The suit also contended that the trustees planned to sell Dapplegray Intermediate School for less than fair market value.

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MODEL SCHOOL: Rancho del Mar High in Rolling Hills has been named one of the 12 model continuation high schools by the California Continuation Education Assn.

Principal William Howard said each continuation school in the state was asked to evaluate itself, looking at the quality of its curriculum, guidance of students and overall climate. In addition, essays on the success of the school were submitted by a parent, a teacher, a member of the community and a student.

A team of evaluators later visited Rancho del Mar, as they did with the 500 other continuation schools. The school was one of two in Los Angeles County to win recognition from the association.

“(The association is) saying this is a program that has things going on worthy of emulation throughout the state,” Howard said. The principal said he has received inquiries about Rancho del Mar’s programs from other continuation schools in the South Bay and Los Angeles Unified School District.

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FOREIGN OBSERVERS: Senior officials of drug and alcohol programs in India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Egypt and Morocco visited the Lennox, Wiseburn, and Centinela Valley Union High School Districts this week to study tobacco, drug and alcohol prevention strategies for possible use in their countries.

At Felton Elementary in Lennox, the officials sat in on the After School Kids club, a program for students who normally go home to an empty house or spend time in the streets after school.

“We formed a club where they could do homework, arts and crafts, sports with a little counseling thrown in,” said Daniel Jurenka, the assistant superintendent of educational services for Lennox School district.

Jurenka said the visitors were interested in the kinds of drugs used in the Los Angeles area, and the effect substance abuse has had on families. He said the foreign officials found some local policies superficial, such as the prohibition on the sale of alcohol to minors.

“In their countries, a 10-year-old could buy alcohol for their parents,” Jurenka said. “They didn’t see younger kids becoming addicted, even though it was readily available.”

Items for the weekly Class Notes column can be mailed to The Times South Bay office, 23133 Hawthorne Blvd., Suite 200, Torrance 90505, or faxed to (310) 373-5753 to the attention of staff reporter Carol Chastang.