VENTURA : Doctors Suggested as Instructors on AIDS

A Ventura school board member said school officials should consider using doctors to teach students about AIDS prevention instead of speakers from AIDS Care because many speakers from the group are gay and students can’t identify with them.

Trustee John Walker’s comments came a day after he reported to the school board his observations on sex education classes in the Ventura Unified School District.

Walker and another board member, Velma Lomax, attended several sessions at Ventura middle schools and high schools during the past two months.

Walker said he wanted to see first-hand what is being taught after the Ventura County School Board voted in March to ban AIDS Care and Planned Parenthood speakers from sex-education seminars for teachers.

He was impressed with many of the presentations, including those given by Planned Parenthood, Walker said. But he was concerned about a presentation made to high school students by two men from AIDS Care, a Ventura group that provides support for people infected with the virus that causes acquired immune deficiency syndrome, he said.

Both men identified themselves as homosexuals and said they became infected because they used unsafe sex practices, Walker said. Teachers use these presentations to “shock” students about the realities of living with AIDS, he said.

“But most ninth-graders can’t identify with an alternative lifestyle,” Walker said.

It might be better to have a doctor come into the classroom and explain prevention and the consequences of becoming infected, he said. Lomax said she had similar concerns.

Doug Green, executive director of AIDS Care, said he was surprised by Walker’s comments about the presentation at Buena High School, which Walker audited.

“Every indication is that kids at Buena were strongly impacted by their exposure to the program,” Green said. “There was complete silence in the room and attention to every word that the speakers made.

“I am really surprised that now he would say we didn’t reach the kids.”

Walker asked district officials to look into the possibility of using doctors. He also recommended that the district expand another speaker program in which a heterosexual man uses humor and facts about disease to urge youths to abstain from sexual intercourse.

But he stressed that educators must move very cautiously in making decisions. “I want to make sure we are not making any hasty conclusions,” Walker said.