KIDS CLUB ASKING FOR PLACE OF ITS OWN.

Byline: DENNIS McCARTHY 

``We have the kids, we have the program. We just need a home.'' - Rose Goldwater, chairwoman of the West Valley Boys & Girls Club 

This shouldn't be happening. One of the San Fernando Valley's most successful low-cost, high-quality, summer and after-school programs for kids shouldn't have to go searching, hat in hand, for a home.

The mayor and City Council should be rolling out the red carpet for it. The Los Angeles Unified School District and the parks and recreation people should be sending it invitations to pick a site - any site - for its program.

Because the work the Boys & Girls Club of America does for kids in local, often low-income, communities is that important to all of us.

All you have to do is stop by the Pacific Lodge Boys Home in Woodland Hills. This is where boys who didn't get the help and guidance they needed to stay out of trouble and combat gang influence find themselves as teen-agers - wards of the court.

Ironically, right now - off in a little corner of this home for wayward boys - is where the West Valley Boys & Girls Club has found a temporary home - on the grounds of an institution it hopes to put out of business someday.

To understand how the West Valley Boys & Girls Club got here - hat in hand - you have to go back to the early '90s, when local business leaders, like Clyde Porter, Bob Voit, Brad Rosenheim and Rose Goldwater, began plotting a strategy to help police stay ahead of a growing gang problem in the West Valley.

``Our goal was to get to the kids early to keep them out of gangs. When we looked at all the programs trying to do that, the Boys & Girls Club was by far the best,'' said Rosenheim.

By 1995, organizers had opened a local club on the grounds of Calvert Street Elementary School in Woodland Hills. The program flourished and grew to more than 125 kids - ages 7 to 17 - most from low-income families.

Instead of the streets providing their after-school activities, the kids now had an inexpensive and educational alternative.

Two of those kids are the children of Sheila Wilks, a single mom with a demanding job, who worried about what her 10- and 12-year-old children were doing and where they were going after school.

``The Boys & Girls Club has been there for my kids,'' she said. ``It's been their home, and the home for a lot of kids after school in the West Valley.

``It's not a day-care, baby-sitting service. The staff works hard with these kids. They all take part in a homework club, computer club, athletics and one-on-one tutoring for those having trouble in school.

``At $20 a year, it's been a blessing for a lot of single moms,'' Wilks said.

Yeah, $20 a year for after-school programs. Full-day summer programs cost $15 a day, plus a small cost for field trips, usually offset by candy sales.

``We don't charge an arm and a leg,'' said Goldwater, a Fernando Award winner for community service and chairwoman of the private, nonprofit West Valley club that gets most of its revenues from grants and fund-raisers.

But since late 1999, when LAUSD officials told Goldwater the club would have to vacate Calvert Street Elementary because the space was needed for special-education classes, the Boys & Girls Club has been a nomad - staying a few months in temporary locations while looking for a permanent home.

From 125 kids, it's now down to only 40 - the number allowed the club at its temporary site in the boys home.

``I've talked to so many parents who want their kids to come back, but there's just no room for them here,'' Wilks said.

``They're now either latchkey kids waiting for their parents to come home from work, or in day care where there are no educational programs offered them.''

It's sad and it's frustrating, Goldwater said, because these are the kids the Boys & Girls Club of America is trying to reach.

``And we have reached them, but because we don't have a home, we can't help them,'' she said.

Rosenheim, past chairman of the club, has been actively looking for a new site in the West Valley, and there are a couple of possibilities on the horizon - but those are a few years away.

But now the worry is over the club itself. It's already had to cut back on its programs for older middle-school kids, and the clock is running on the few months it can run its program out of the Pacific Lodge Boys Home.

``We just can't find a place in an area that will rent to a club with kids,'' Rosenheim said. ``We're not looking for a freebie. We've got a limited budget we can pay. But we'd rather use most of the money for the kids and programs.

``If we could find a home in the Canoga Park area for about a year, it would be great,'' he said.

So, there it is - a great program this city should be welcoming with open arms, instead of it going hat in hand.

They have the kids, they have the program, now all they need is a home.

For more information on the West Valley Boys & Girls Club, call [phone].

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Photo:

Sarah Minaise, 13, of Woodland Hills and Vladimir Sandovar, 21, a staff teen coordinator, play Twister at the temporary club home.

Tina Burch/Staff Photographer