AIDS Group Fails to Get Trustees’ OK : Schools: Board says teachers must notify parents before organization’s speakers can address sex education in classrooms.

Dozens of AIDS Care supporters failed Tuesday night to persuade three Ventura school trustees to put the organization on a list of sex education speakers whom high school teachers can invite to their classrooms.

The three trustees said that when speakers from AIDS Care have addressed classrooms about the disease, they have often discussed their personal lives as well. All of the speakers are infected with the AIDS virus and most are gay.

“Some board members were concerned that some individual messages about AIDS construed a [sexual] preference,” Supt. Joseph P. Spirito said. The three trustees said they wanted to notify parents before any AIDS Care speakers addressed a class.

But the three-trustee majority insisted that the 3-2 vote did not bar AIDS Care speakers from the classroom.

“We are not banning them by any means,” said John Walker, a Ventura Unified School District board member, voting to take the AIDS group off the list.

Walker said that teachers who want to allow the group in their classrooms must now clear it with the school principal and send a note home with their students. Teachers do not need the same approval when bringing in organizations--such as Planned Parenthood and Ventura County Family Planning--that appear on the list.

AIDS Care Director Doug Green said he does not object to sending notes home with students informing parents his group will be in the classroom.

“But I object to being singled out,” Green said. “That’s discrimination.” He also said that the vote failed to accomplish anything.

“All it did was create a tempest in a teapot,” he said. “Teachers will still invite us into the classroom.”

Green was one of about two dozen speakers Tuesday night who argued against the exclusion. Others included parents, people with HIV and educators.

Trustees Diane Harriman and Cliff Rodriguez also objected to the measure.

“I think we are spending an inordinate amount of time on something that ain’t broke,” Harriman said. “They are singling out AIDS.”

Harriman said teachers have always sent home notes before potentially controversial subjects were discussed in sex education classes. Furthermore, the speakers list until now was simply a “suggested speaker” list, Harriman said. With the action taken Tuesday, the list now becomes a “recommended speaker list,” Harriman said.

“I don’t know why the change,” Harriman said. She said she thinks that the conservative Christian group that influenced the Ventura County Board of Education’s recent sex education decision also pressured trustees in Ventura.

Two parents argued for the exclusion.

“The district should restrict its curriculum to academics,” said Eric Loos. “I will teach my daughters morals and ethics.”

The county board recently voted 3 to 2 to ban AIDS Care and Planned Parenthood from teachers’ workshop. Two board members who favored the ban now face a recall effort by gay activists and others who think the county board buckled to pressure by religious groups.

But the three Ventura Unified trustees said that their votes had nothing to do with the county board’s decision to ban AIDS Care along with Planned Parenthood from teacher workshops.

Ventura board President Jim Wells said he voted to drop the group from the list because AIDS Care “presents a biased position.” He said the group’s speakers talk of how they contracted AIDS, which may be inappropriate for some younger students.

“I can tell you this is not a religious issue or an activist issue,” he said. “I think we need to approach this from a unbiased and clinical position.”

Consequently, more doctors and other health care providers who deal directly with AIDS have been added to the list, Wells said. Trustee Velma Lomax also voted to keep AIDS Care off the list.