Volunteer Policy Debate Reaches Supreme Court : Education: Mandate similar to that in some O.C. schools is challenged in Pennsylvania by two students.

Joy Snow, a Laguna Beach High School sophomore, helps disabled children learn to ride horses. Junior Matt Shea takes care of toddlers during church.

Two seniors last year spent their Saturday mornings collecting recyclables at a retirement home, and a third filled her spring vacation helping a not-so-well-off acquaintance move from one apartment to the other.

It’s all part of the curriculum in the Laguna Beach Unified School District, where along with four years of English, 3 1/2 years of social science, three years of math, two years of science, two years of gym, two years of art or foreign language, a semester of health, a computer course and 20 electives, students are required to perform at least 10 hours of community service each year in order to graduate.

“We hope this little taste of volunteerism is something that’s going to carry on and be a lifelong experience,” explained Barbara Callard, principal of the 750-student school. “It broadens a sense of giving to others (and) fostering individual responsibility within a democracy.”

But the heart of Laguna’s program is under attack thousands of miles away, as two students have taken their complaints about a nearly identical service requirement all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. The justices are expected to announce today whether they will review the case, in which the students from Bethlehem, Pa., say their high school’s mandatory volunteerism infringes on their free speech rights and amounts to modern-day slavery that violates the 13th Amendment.

In Orange County, Laguna Beach was the first public school system to establish a mandatory community service requirement when it started the program last year. Partly because of the threat of a legal challenge like the one in Bethlehem, other South County school districts crafting community service programs recently were more lax.

This year, Saddleback Valley Unified instituted an eight-hour public service requirement for graduates--but those who object to the program can write a research paper about the role of community service in history instead; Capistrano Unified chose to weave volunteerism into the curriculum so helping others will be one of the assignments handed out in history class.

“We are sympathetic to the concept of community service and it being the part of (students’) rounded development, but we were concerned about the whole notion” of requiring it, said Capistrano Supt. James A. Fleming. “Some people said, ‘If we are talking about volunteerism, it simply doesn’t fit to have it as a requirement.’ ”

Several hundred public schools in a dozen states have service requirements; last month, Maryland became the first state to require community service for all high school graduates.

Private schools, particularly Catholic schools, have long included volunteer work as a staple of the program: Mater Dei and Santa Margarita high schools each require 80 hours of public service for graduation, and Servite High in Anaheim mandates 60 hours for all graduates.

In the Bethlehem case, Lynn Steirer--an avid volunteer with Girl Scouts, Meals on Wheels, a nursing home and a local music festival--has refused to document her service hours to fulfill the district’s 60-hour requirement, begun in 1990. One of 175 students in her district who may not graduate in June because she has failed to complete the community service requirement, Steirer and her parents have argued in court that volunteerism should be voluntary, not mandated by government.

They lost in lower court, but the libertarian Institute for Justice offered to bring the case to the Supreme Court on a pro-bono basis.

“We are certainly not against the idea of helping other people. We think it’s a great idea,” said Scott Bullock, an attorney at the Washington-based Institute for Justice. “What (we) object to is that the government can force participation in a program that the government decides on.”

Bullock argues that teaching altruism is the purview of parents, not school boards. He also worries that the district’s policy, which requires students to volunteer in groups that “serve the community interest” leaves space for administrators to impose their politics and ideology on children.

As a parallel, Bullock points to a 50-year-old case in which the Supreme Court said schools cannot force students to say the Pledge of Allegiance: They can teach patriotism, but cannot mandate behavior. He said his clients don’t want the whole program gutted, they just want those opposed to the idea to be able to opt out--like Saddleback Valley’s research-paper option.

“It’s true that public schools do get into the values arena; it’s inevitable,” Bullock admitted. “But they can’t force students to act in accordance with those values.”

In Orange County, the Bethlehem debate was echoed on the bitterly divided Saddleback Valley school board as it considered the community service requirement last year.

“It is once again taking the place of the parents and saying, ‘Thou shalt learn this altruism,’ ” said Frank Ury, one of two Saddleback trustees who voted against the plan.

“It’s a nice, warm fuzzy (idea) but the problem in this state is not community service and whether or not people help their neighbors, the problem in this state is whether kids are getting an education,” Ury said. “Until I am satisfied that the product of education is completed 100% for students, I certainly don’t want (schools) moving into areas of altruism. Let’s get down to educating these kids.”

But Callard, the Laguna Beach principal, insisted that community service is part of education. She argued that schools train children to be responsible citizens, and noted that many individual districts or schools have requirements beyond what is listed in the state education code depending on the values of the community and its leaders.

“Anyone could look at any of our graduation requirements and question them: Why do we have one year of foreign language? Or one year of fine arts?” the principal asked rhetorically. “All of them are things that we feel are qualities we want in our Laguna Beach High School graduates. It’s academic responsibility and social responsibility, all of which go toward making a good citizen.”

For their part, the students at Laguna Beach High School don’t seem to mind the extra requirement, though nearly a quarter of last year’s graduating class had to scramble to find volunteer work or get their paperwork signed during the final weeks of school.

At a schoolwide assembly devoted to community service last week, the masses cheered when Callard introduced the STARS (Service To Area Residents by Students) program, cheered even louder for the lip-synch performance by the all-volunteer theater group The Quiet Zone, and gave a massive ovation to Chris, a former drug addict who spoke about how he was helped by a local homeless shelter.

And they listened, enraptured, as a college admissions expert testified to the importance of volunteerism, citing the case of an applicant to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who was rejected despite his 4.3 grade point average and his near-perfect score on the Scholastic Aptitude Test because he had no community service experience.

Not well-rounded enough, the recruiter explained.

“I think it’s rad,” first-year student Jeff Brown, 14, said as he collected brochures from representataives of several of the 30 agencies who came to the school gym Wednesday to recruit volunteers. “It makes you realize that people need help, that you’re not the only person in the community. It makes you feel good.”

Senior Kelli Fitzgerald filled last year’s requirement by helping organize the school’s AIDS Awareness Week. This year, she said, she’d like to do some volunteer work with AIDS patients.

“Probably just because it’s something that the school says they have to do, people don’t want to do it,” Fitzgerald said, looking around the crowded gymnasium at a school where about 85% of the students go on to higher education. “But it looks good on college applications, so they’ll be glad they did it.”