GLENDALE : District Cancels AIDS Awareness Play

Glendale school district officials closed the curtains on an AIDS awareness play the day before its scheduled performance at Hoover High School, saying the production’s message clashes with district policy.

District officials said they canceled “Secrets,” a play produced by the Kaiser Permanente health care organization, because it discusses safe sex through the use of condoms.

District policy, said Gregory Bowman, director of instruction and student services, is to teach that abstaining from sex is the only way to avoid AIDS.

The decision to call off Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s scheduled performances of “Secrets” sparked anger among members of Hoover’s Parent-Teacher-Student Assn., which co-sponsored the event.

District officials and board members “have done a grave disservice to the children at Hoover High School,” said PTSA President Susan Kussman. Kussman said the PTSA has planned to bring “Secrets” to the campus for nearly a year. Rick Burke, director of educational theater programs at Kaiser, said the play has been shown to 700,000 students over eight years.

“The way I interpret the policy is that you stress abstinence, but you teach what needs to be taught, which means safe sex,” said Carolyn Crane, AIDS awareness chairwoman for the PTSA.

The 50-minute play centers on a high school senior, Eddie, and his girlfriend, Monica.

Eddie learns he has tested positive for the HIV virus after sharing an intravenous needle twice with friends. Even before this discovery, Monica tells her friends that she will refrain from having sex with Eddie, said Burke.

Anticipating district concerns, the PTSA asked Kaiser to drop a scene in which actors use a banana to show how condoms are worn. Still, condoms are discussed as a way to help prevent the disease.

“The philosophy of this district is that abstinence is the clear message we send to young people about sexual intercourse,” said Bowman.

The play “doesn’t always give the information that’s required--that condoms aren’t 100% effective,” he said.

District spokesman Vic Pallos said the play was also canceled because parents were not notified in their respective languages, and because parents and district staff weren’t given sufficient time to preview a tape of the play.

Kussman of the PTSA said parent permission slips were printed in English, although an explanation of them was printed in Korean in a newsletter.

Neither permission slips nor explanations in the newsletter were printed in Armenian or Spanish, she said, even though students attend the school whose parents speak those languages.

Not only was the scene in which the banana is used to demonstrate how to put on a condom eliminated, but a 10-minute discussion after the play was supposed to stress abstinence as the only foolproof method of preventing AIDS, parents said.