Reluctant Board OKs AIDS Teaching Grant

Bowing to local school districts, the Ventura County Board of Education agreed Monday to apply for a state grant teaching students to speak on AIDS prevention--a vote one board member said was an endorsement of local school board control, not the prevention programs.

“I don’t agree with it, and I wouldn’t initiate it,” said county board President Marty Bates. “But if that is what the local districts want to do, they have a right to have it.”

The vote comes at a time when the county board is facing criticism for refusing to apply for a federal jobs training grant that local districts sought last fall. The county board also raised a stir last year when it restricted the groups teaching AIDS and sex education.

But the $20,000 state grant considered Monday would merely continue and expand programs that received board approval in July. The grant would pay for programs to train students to be peer educators on HIV prevention and to develop presentations geared to students, parents and administrators--particularly at schools with the highest teen pregnancy rates.

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The county superintendent of schools will file the application on behalf of five school districts: Ventura Unified, Oxnard Union, Fillmore Unified and the Briggs Elementary and Rio elementary school districts.

Only one board member, Angela Miller, voted against applying for the AIDS training grant Monday. Board member Wendy Larner did not attend the meeting.

“I’m opposed to spending tax dollars in this program,” Miller said. “We have a responsibility to vote our conscience as to whether the program is worthy. I will, this time and in the future, vote according to my conscience.”

Bates, who voted with Miller and Larner to reject the federal jobs grant, said that issue was different.

Bates said when the funding on the five-year, school-to-work grant ran out, the county would have had to take over the funding of an entrenched bureaucracy. “I objected to the bureaucracy it was going to create, and I objected to the percentage of it that was going to go to administration,” he said.

Last spring, the three conservative board members also voted against allowing Planned Parenthood and local AIDS advocacy groups to train teachers on AIDS prevention and sex education. That decision sparked a bitter debate and an unsuccessful recall drive against Larner and Miller.

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Along with the rejection of the school-to-work grant, the AIDS education issue sparked a resolution drafted by various school boards urging county officials not to “usurp local control.”

On Monday, the board officially received such resolutions from Fillmore Unified, Ojai Unified, Santa Paula Union High and the Santa Paula and Rio elementary school districts.

“I would hope we would all take a look at these resolutions,” board member John McGarry said. “They are trying to tell us something, and I think we should listen.”