FOUNTAIN VALLEY

Tough Love Members Seeking Weekly Meeting Place

A group of 30 parents turned to Tough Love for support and hope in dealing with raising their troubled children.

But now the group faces another dilemma: the possibility of disbanding because it has no place to meet.

Joan Lutz, who founded the local group three years ago, said members are looking for another meeting place after losing the use of two classrooms--one room for parents, the other for their children--at Fountain Valley High School. Their last meeting there was Oct.26.

Gloria Diaz, a parent involved in Tough Love, said the group was put on probation last year by the school’s principal, Gary Ernst, after a phone line was cut by a youngster. About two months ago, a youngster scribbled graffiti in a teacher’s roll book, resulting in the grouplosing its meeting space, she said.

Lutz, Diaz and another parent, Ida Malloy, recently made impassioned pleas to the Fountain Valley School District board for a place to meet weekly.

Marc Ecker, the district’s assistant superintendent of administration and business, said he will look into finding the group a place to meet.

Diaz said she has exhausted efforts to find another place where two rooms would be available at no charge or for a minimal fee. The group survives on parent donations.

“We’re hopeful we’ll find a place,” Lutz said. “We’ve worked very hard in our community. These are parents helping parents.”