SANTA PAULA, OJAI : Schools Seek Funds for AIDS Prevention

Ventura County school board members have agreed to apply for three state-funded grant programs aimed at preventing AIDS and smoking and for a program that trains HIV-infected people to speak before high school students.

During its meeting this week, the board voted 3 to 1, with one abstention, to give the go-ahead to staff to apply for a $20,000 state grant to run the HIV Prevention Education/Youth in Schools program. Board member Angela N. Miller voted against the grant while board President Wendy Larner abstained.

The HIV-prevention program is designed to train students to be peer educators on acquired immune deficiency syndrome and to conduct programs before junior high and senior high students, parents and administrators.

Board members Monday voted unanimously to seek a $62,500 state grant for a two-year smoking-prevention program targeted at students in the Ojai Unified, Santa Paula Union and county-run court and community schools.

The board also voted 3 to 2 to seek $75,000 in state grant funding for the “Positively Speaking” Program--a program which trains people who are infected with HIV/AIDS to speak before junior and high school students. The speakers tell students their life stories while emphasizing abstinence and recommended safe-sex precautions to avoid contracting the deadly virus.

Miller and Larner cast the opposing votes on that program.

Larner and Miller both voted this spring against allowing Planned Parenthood and a local AIDS advocacy group to train teachers on AIDS prevention and sex education. That decision sparked a bitter debate and a recall drive against the two members.