If Smoking Goes, Does Bingo Go? : What’s the Better Bet for Schools: Lose State Funding or Give Up Income From Players?

Head bowed as if in prayer, lucky leprechaun in place, sixtysomething Sundi Martino is ready for “speed ball” bingo, a Saratoga cigarette in one hand, a thick marking pen in the other.

And we’re off, with the bingo caller at Duarte High School rattling off numbers at triple time-- “Fourtwelvethirtythree. . . “--while ashes from Martino’s cigarette crumble in a black heap on her losing playing cards.

Time for another smoke. Smoke a little, play a little--it’s a Saturday night ritual in danger of being outlawed.

California’s public schools have until July 1 to ban smoking at their facilities and events or lose state funds to teach the dangers of smoking.

But several school districts, including Duarte, are learning about the dangers of no smoking: losing thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars in bingo money, much more than they would lose in state funds.

Do they risk driving away droves of smokers? Or allow the smoke-filled rooms so the big bingo bucks keep rolling in?

Among the renegade districts that are expected to ignore the state’s deadline for smoking bans are Huntington Beach, Hacienda La Puente and Charter Oak in Covina.

In Duarte, Martino, a TV makeup artist from Monrovia, complained that a smoking ban would ruin her Saturday night bingo games.

“I think we should fight back, you know what I mean?” she said. “I would get a class-action suit with the other schools. I would fight it to the [U.S.] Supreme Court . . . it’s [our] bingo money.”

Tonight, the Duarte Unified School District Board of Education will decide whether to rebuff the state mandate and exempt bingo from its tobacco policy, which otherwise bans smoking at any time, anywhere on its campuses. Bingo brings in $50,000 a year; state tobacco funds are only $19,000.

It’s a difficult decision: Does the district turn its back on the state with an eye toward bingo profits? If so, what kind of a moral example does that set for students, whom they teach that smoking is bad? Or does the district try to limp along with nonsmoking bingo games, which have proved unprofitable at other schools?

Duarte booster club officials say the state has forced them to find ways to make up for dwindling education dollars. Duarte’s bingo money pays for items including textbooks, scholarships and band uniforms.

“It’s either [bingo with smoking], or you throw up your hands and say, ‘Forget education. We can’t [afford] that,’ ” said Mayor Jim Kirchner, a nonsmoker who is chairman of Duarte High School’s booster club bingo.

On the other hand, one state education official charged: “It’s not a good example when you place a high priority on money you get from bingo and sully [the students’] air and environment.”

State officials will not know how many districts decline to pass the sweeping smoking bans until after July 1, said Rae Kine, an analyst with the state Department of Education’s tobacco education program. Under the ban, bingo players would not even be allowed to step outside the school cafeteria to smoke or to light up in the parking lot. Districts must pass the ban to be eligible for funds that are available through Proposition 99, which voters approved in 1988. The initiative imposed a 25-cent tax on each pack of cigarettes to pay for anti-tobacco education and other programs.

More than 100 school districts statewide offer bingo games--usually through booster clubs--including about 30 in Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino and Riverside counties, said Steven Montgomery, a publisher of the Bingo Bugle newspaper. (The Los Angeles Unified School District does not allow bingo at schools.) Most school-based bingo games draw more than 200 players a night, charge $15 admission plus a fee for every game, and pay winners $250 each in more than 20 games a night. About two-thirds of the players smoke, Montgomery said.

Statewide, booster club leaders worry about what happened to Los Altos High School in the Hacienda La Puente Unified School District, which was forced to close its bingo operation in April after a 4-month-old trial smoking ban drove away too many players.

Attendance also dropped at La Puente High School, which is trying nonsmoking bingo, said teacher Robert Dominick, who helps coordinate the games. But the school plans to allow smoking at bingo again and hopes to get an exemption from the state mandate, he said, even though state officials have said no bingo exemptions will be granted.

Some districts are considering options such as moving the games elsewhere, but say rent and other expenses would be prohibitively expensive. Other districts say they want to set a good example, even if it means trying to make nonsmoking bingo games stay afloat.

In the Ontario area, four high schools offer bingo games, bringing in a total of $200,000 a year; the district’s tobacco education funds total about $100,000. But officials decided that moral considerations outweighed the financial loss.

“It would not seem consistent with that [anti-smoking education] effort in the classrooms to say, on the one hand, this is not good for you, and on the other hand, it’s all right if you’re getting enough [bingo] money to do it,” said Sue Sundell, director of business services for the Ontario-based Chaffey Joint Union High School District.

Huntington Beach school officials decided against the smoking ban, rather than lose the $500,000 bingo brings in each year. The district receives $10,000 annually in state tobacco education funds.

It does set a bad example, conceded John Myers, assistant superintendent of the Huntington Beach Union High School District. “It’s just when you make hundreds of thousands that go directly back into the school program, that’s a tough decision.”

In the Charter Oak Unified School District, school board members decided against the smoking ban after reviewing a report by an environmental firm that analyzed air samples before, during and after bingo at Royal Oak Intermediate School, said Patrick Castagnaro, director of student services.

After bingo, the trace amount of nicotine left in the air was not enough to harm students who used the school gym the next day, the report showed. Bingo brings in about $80,000 a year, compared to $13,764 in state tobacco education funds.

Most schools, including Duarte High School, offer a main room for smokers and a smaller, air-conditioned nonsmoking room. The nonsmoking room is so smoky that some players bring small electric fans to help clear the air.

Marie Ponce, 48, who plays each week in the nonsmoking room, never looks forward to the next day’s aftereffects from all the smoke: stinging eyes, a hacking cough and a plugged nose.

“To me, I think we should set an example for the kids,” said Ponce, a Baldwin Park blood bank worker. “We shouldn’t smoke. We’re the adults.”