Condoms to Be Made Available Today at 4 L.A. High Schools

Three months after the Los Angeles Board of Education adopted a plan to strengthen AIDS prevention and education efforts, four high schools today will become the first in the district to give students access to condoms on campus.

Students at Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Venice and Washington Preparatory high schools who have not been denied parental permission will be able to receive condoms from school nurses, counselors and other faculty members on campus, said Deputy Supt. Sid Thompson. But Thompson emphasized that a message of abstinence will also be delivered with the condoms.

“We still are saying to all of our young people that abstinence is the best way,� said Thompson during a news conference Wednesday. But, he added, “we’re simply saying, in line with board policy, that those who are going to be sexually active had better have protection. . . . We’re trying to prevent an epidemic of this disease.�

The district has purchased 20,000 condoms from the Los Angeles County Department of Health at a cost of about $800, and about 250 to 300 condoms will be distributed to each campus initially, Thompson said.

Eventually, every high school student in the district will have access to the condoms, whether they attend one of the district’s 49 high schools, or a continuation or adult school within the district, Thompson said. The remaining high schools are expected to begin their condom distribution program in the weeks of May 4 and May 11, after those who will dispense the condoms complete training by the district’s Office of Student Medical Services.

The distribution of condoms was the most controversial aspect of a multi-pronged AIDS education and prevention program approved by the school board Jan. 21. After more than two years of study and debate, the school board narrowly approved the proposal, giving parents the option of signing a form to deny their children permission to receive the condoms. If parents fail to return the form, school authorities will assume that the student can receive condoms, but parents have the option to deny permission at any time.

Consent forms written in seven languages were sent to 134,000 households throughout the district in mid-April. District officials said they do not know how many have been returned districtwide.

Ramon Castillo, principal of Wilson High, said that several parents have expressed disapproval about the passing out of condoms on campus, but only 43 forms denying students permission to obtain them have been returned.

The number was lower at Venice High, said Principal Andrea L. Natker, who said that only 35 of the school’s 1,953 students had been denied permission to receive condoms by their parents.

Concerns over protecting student privacy led most of the district’s 49 senior high schools to choose several sites on campus where teen-agers can feel comfortable and not be identified as seeking condoms.

“We want to give the youngsters as much privacy as possible,� said Castillo. Students at the school will be able to receive condoms at a dozen locations, from faculty members, including two physical education instructors, the school nurse and coordinators of various school programs.

Castillo added that those faculty members will have a checklist to run through before providing condoms to students. After making sure that the students have not been denied permission to receive the condom by their families, “we emphasize that abstinence is the safest way to go,� said Castillo. “Then we discuss HIV (the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS), and (then) we give them the condom.� Each student will be given two condoms at the distribution and is free to request more when needed.

Like at Wilson High, Natker said several locations have been designated on campus for students to go for condoms when classes are not in session. Among the faculty members who will be passing out the condoms are a counselor, a teacher and an assistant principal.

With today’s start of condom distribution, the nation’s second-largest school district joins several urban school systems that have adopted similar plans, including New York City, Philadelphia and San Francisco.

Teen-agers represent only a fraction of the 13,600 AIDS cases recorded in Los Angeles County during the last decade. But because the disease takes, on average, seven to 10 years to develop after a person is infected with the virus, health experts suggest that most of the 2,400 people age 20 to 29 who have been diagnosed with AIDS countywide probably contracted the virus as teen-agers.