Other districts bypass l. A. 's school condom plan : education: the hart board is discussing distribution. Burbank, las virgenes and antelope valley systems have taken no action.

Despite the Los Angeles school board’s controversial decision earlier this week to make condoms available on all high school campuses, no such program is currently being considered in the

Burbank, Las Virgenes or Antelope Valley school districts, officials said Thursday. Only the William S. Hart Union High School District in the Santa Clarita Valley has even discussed condom

distribution. No decision is imminent, officials say. “Why would anybody want to follow what L.A. Unified does?” said Burbank school board President William S. Abbey, who added that no one

has approached him about taking up and examining the issue. “It’s a terribly irresponsible thing.” Abbey noted that the district grasped the seriousness of the AIDS epidemic and that

information about the disease is incorporated into health courses. “But in terms of the school district getting into the business of handing out condoms . . . that’s just not our function,”

he said. Condom distribution is also “not an area under discussion” in the Antelope Valley Union High School District, said David Rich, coordinator of pupil personnel services. But in the

Hart district, the idea of making condoms available to the district’s 7,000 high school students has been bandied about throughout the school year at meetings involving parents, teachers and

administrators. The issue may have received added impetus after professional basketball star Earvin (Magic) Johnson revealed late last year that he has contracted the virus that causes

AIDS, said Sarah Napier, the district’s supervisor of pupil services. “It’s been an open discussion at community advisory committee meetings,” Napier said. “They’ve been working it through.”

However, no conclusion or final decision has been reached, she said, adding that the community the district serves is “significantly different” from Los Angeles. But the decision Tuesday by

the nation’s second-largest school district to hand out condoms, which follows similar efforts in New York City, Philadelphia and San Francisco, may nonetheless affect neighboring school

districts, such as Las Virgenes Unified to the west. “There’s been no public inquiry to the Board of Education thus far regarding condom distribution . . . but that’s not to say it won’t

happen in the next couple of weeks owing to the action of Los Angeles,” Las Virgenes Assistant Supt. Leo Lowe said. “If there’s going to be any rippling effect, in the next 30 days it will

tell,” he said. “But we’re not prepared to do anything directly at the moment.” MORE TO READ