AIDS GROUP EXPELLED : SCHOOL TRUSTEE SAYS SHE RESPONDED TO PARENT CALLS.

Byline: Karen Maeshiro Daily News Staff Writer

An AIDS support group has been barred from speaking to students in the Antelope Valley Union High School District after board members objected to some of the information the group had provided.

One piece of information deemed particularly objectionable was advice to protect against AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases during oral sex by using a dental dam - a piece of latex rubber used to prevent infection during dental work - or plastic sandwich wrap. The discussion took place at Quartz Hill High School.

``It's not a healthy choice,'' said trustee Sue Stokka, who said she received complaints from a half-dozen parents. ``The purpose of a health education class is to teach students to make healthy choices. If they are teaching students methods that are not safe and do not provide adequate protection, it's not appropriate,'' Stokka said in a telephone interview.

Trustee Kevin Carney said he questioned the motives of the Catalyst group, which stopped making presentations in January, and said recommending the use of a dental dam is an ``immoral thing'' that should not be pushed on children.

``I think they are more interested in the homosexual agenda rather than providing factual information to students,'' Carney said by phone. ``Homosexuality is a great evil in this country. It is not normal human behavior, and we don't need to be giving children ideas that it is normal.''

Dr. Susan Lawrence, founder of the Catalyst Foundation, which provides medical and support services for people with AIDS and HIV, disagreed with the board members.

``Using dental dam and Saran wrap is appropriate information. It's correct information,'' Lawrence said. ``This is standard information about safer sex.''

Lawrence said that the Catalyst's AIDS education programs emphasize that the only 100 percent certain way to avoid HIV, the AIDS virus, is to abstain from sex and drugs. But with girls and boys becoming sexually active at 15 and 16, teens need information about how to reduce the risk of HIV infection, she said.

``We're dealing with a situation where we may want them to say, `Just say no,' but the reality is that is not enough,'' Lawrence said. ``If we want kids to be alive, we have to give them this information or else they are going to die.''

Lawrence said Catalyst presenters were asked to leave Palmdale High School during a break in presentations to students in January. The group had been doing presentations at local high schools for about two years.

Quartz Hill High School senior class President Michael Ambriz believes the board made the wrong decision in expelling the group.

``I believe the presentations that the Catalyst Foundation gives are important to students,'' said Ambriz, 18, who told board members last week that banning Catalyst was not a good idea. ``Most often students need a face to go with the teaching and see someone who's going through things and dealing with disease.''

Ambriz, a student member of a committee that's in the process of rewriting the district's family life and sex education curriculum, said the information on the dental dam and plastic wrap was not part of the presenters' formal talk, but was given in response to a question by a Quartz Hill student.

The Catalyst group was barred from speaking on campus after the school board discussed the parents' complaints in a closed session meeting. Two or three parents attended the closed session, but no one was present from the Catalyst group.

No vote was taken, but Carney and Stokka described it as a ``consensus decision'' that Catalyst be barred from the campuses, and administrators followed that directive.

``Members of the board felt that this organization could be easily replaced by a less controversial group that would present information in an unbiased manner that would be more acceptable to students and parents,'' Stokka said.

Trustee Bill Olenick defended the Catalyst program.

``I haven't seen evidence of a bias slant or erroneous information,'' Olenick said. ``We owe our students all the facts and truths, and should not hide our heads in the sand and pretend it's not a problem.''

Olenick also disagreed with the characterization of the closed session, saying there was no consensus. The vote, had one been taken, probably would have been 2-2, Olenick said. Former trustee Tony Welch was not present at the closed meeting.

Superintendent Robert Girolamo, however, said he had talked with Welch. The superintendent said Welch, Stokka and Carney did not favor continuing with Catalyst.