Superintendent Asserts Right to Include Banned Groups in Teacher Training

Charles Weis, Ventura County superintendent of schools, said Monday that he will continue to include speakers from Planned Parenthood and AIDS Care in teacher-training workshops--despite a ban on those groups by the county school board--if local school officials want them.

When school reconvenes next month, staff from the superintendent of schools office will meet with the curriculum and health directors at each of the county’s 20 local school districts, Weis said.

If a majority of those educators say they want representatives from Planned Parenthood and AIDS Care to be included in sex-education workshops for teachers, he will include them, Weis said.

That would directly contradict the County Board of Education’s March 27 decision to ban those groups from teacher seminars sponsored by the county schools office.

Trustees Wendy Larner, Angela N. Miller and Marty Bates said at the time that the ban was temporary until the board could determine whether it legally had authority to take such action.

Weis has contended that he and not the board has jurisdiction over how the workshops are run and over who is invited to participate. Both Weis and the board have produced legal opinions supporting their contentions.

But as the new school year approaches--with no resolution in sight--Weis said he has decided to put the matter before local educators. He said he is ready to include the controversial speakers if local school officials say they want them.

And Weis said he is ready to accept the consequences of that decision, even if it means a possible lawsuit filed by the board.

“In my opinion, the majority of the legal opinions say that I should be conducting these workshops,” Weis said. “And if that is what those school districts want, we are here to serve them.”

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Weis noted that teachers are required by state law to give instruction in AIDS prevention, and that one component of that requirement is to teach compassion for AIDS sufferers.

“We will find out what the school districts need and we will build a curriculum,” he said.

The topic came up again Monday night at the county school board’s meeting. Larner told the board that the state attorney general’s office has declined to issue an opinion on the matter until County Counsel James McBride makes a ruling.

But McBride is reluctant to do so, county school officials have said, because he represents both the Superintendent of Schools Office, run by Weis, and the County Board of Education.

Bates asked that the issue be included on the agenda for the next meeting for possible further action, although he did not say what that action might be.

Before Monday’s meeting, Miller said that she is not surprised by Weis’ decision to proceed with workshops that include the banned groups.

“He always does whatever he wants,” Miller said. “This shows that you can’t function with two heads. So there is going to have to be an ultimate decision at some point.”

But Weis’ supporters said this is another example of a three-member conservative majority trying to wrest power from the superintendent. On Monday, his supporters also decried Larner’s request for a review of Weis’ $112,000 annual salary. The board is trying to determine whether it has authority to set the superintendent’s salary and decide how often that the salary can be changed.

“Dr. Weis’ contract is with the voters of this county,” said Richard Messina of Thousand Oaks. “If by any chance we don’t like what he’s done he will be voted out of office. But I think he will be reelected by a landslide.”

Bates said, however, that the board’s critics were misinterpreting their intention in looking at Weis’ salary. “The reason we are discussing this is to clarify where we are on this issue. It is not to reduce or increase his salary.”

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Four school districts--Oxnard Elementary, Briggs, Ojai and Ocean View--have written letters or passed resolutions condemning the county school board’s March 27 vote.

James Suter, a trustee of the Oxnard Elementary School District, said he was glad to hear that Weis plans to go directly to educators to ask what they want in teacher-training seminars.

“I think teachers should be given every opportunity to glean information that [they] can use in teaching kids today,” Suter said. “They need this information desperately.”