VENTURA : Consultant to Target Student Conflicts

Responding to recent racial conflicts at Ventura High School, the Ventura school district decided Tuesday to hire a consultant to launch a student mediation program at the school.

Supt. Joseph Spirito said conflict-resolution specialist Judith Rubenstein of Santa Barbara will go to the high school next week.

Her first task, Spirito said, will be to meet with certain white students who align themselves with white supremacist causes and some black and Latino students to try to assess how best to ease racial tensions at the school.

Conflicts between white and black students sparked clashes at two recent basketball games that led to four arrests.

After these meetings, Rubenstein will train students who belong to the school’s multicultural Rainbow Coalition to act as mediators between classmates who have disputes.

The school will use the student mediators to help resolve all types of student conflicts, not just racial problems, Spirito said.

“We also have problems where kids fight over the way they look at each other,” he said. “It’s not all racial.”

As Spirito met in his office Tuesday morning with Rubenstein, a small group assembled outside to protest any hiring of the Anti-Defamation League to offer its brand of anti-prejudice training at Ventura High.

A parent of a Ventura High student called the ADL after the recent racial incidents.

But Spirito said he has no plans at this point to contract for the ADL’s services.