2 Board Members Express Doubts About School Crime Hot Line : Safety: Boudreaux and Korenstein say students might not turn in classmates for fear of reprisals.

Two Los Angeles school board members expressed reservations Thursday about a plan to reward students who turn in classmates who have weapons or drugs, or who are seen vandalizing campuses, saying they need more information on the proposed hot line.

At a meeting of the board’s school safety committee, members Barbara Boudreaux and Julie Korenstein said they are uneasy about the plan to reward students for tattling on campus rule breakers and want to find out how other anonymous reward hot lines work.

The proposal was sent to the board’s student affairs committee and a districtwide school safety group for further input. The hot line will not be started unless it receives approval from the seven-member Board of Education.

The proposal was initiated in October by the San Fernando Valley chapter of Safari Club International, a nonprofit group of sport hunters, which has pledged $15,000 to the school district over the next year. School district police, who back the idea, developed the plan to give students up to $75 in gift certificates and merchandise for information that leads to students’ arrests.

Korenstein said she feels uncomfortable with a hunting group underwriting the plan and questioned whether such a hot line would be successful, because students fear retaliation.

“On paper, it might sound very good . . . but it makes me nervous,” Korenstein said. “I’m not sure this is the end-all and will take care of the problem of weapons on campus.”

Bill Gillespie of the Safari Club told the board panel he believes the program could be a successful model for school districts around the country.

“I think the issue should be not who we are, but how we are willing to help the school district resolve these issues on campus,” he said.

Under the proposal, students would be given gifts such as concert tickets, clothing and compact discs for anonymously providing authorities with campus crime information. To protect hot line callers, students would be identified by case numbers, not their names.

Boudreaux said she believes the proposal should be modified to eliminate students’ rewards in favor of donations to individual schools. She said students all too often brag about new clothes or shoes, increasing the chance that they could be singled out for informing.

Further, she said, students should be taught to report crimes without reward incentives. “I think . . . our students shouldn’t be taught to receive a reward for doing the right thing,” Boudreaux said.

Board member Victoria Castro, who heads the safety committee, said she generally supports the hot line idea because students have valuable information but need an incentive to disclose it.

School District Police Lt. Walter Nelson, who developed the hot line proposal, said he believes more weapons could be recovered and other crimes stemmed if students are given a reward.

“What we’re doing is basically encouraging kids to help make their campuses more secure,” Nelson said.