Punished Students Get a Way to Work Off Ban

Las Virgenes Unified School District officials have withdrawn their ban on extracurricular activities for some Calabasas High School students involved in a drinking incident aboard buses chartered to carry the teen-agers to a school dance.

Officials said Monday that 19 students barred from taking part in sports, student government and other activities were given a chance to be released from the ban by signing up, with their parents, to attend a 16-hour educational program.

Five students accepted the offer, including the school’s student-body president, they said. School officials said that no further offers of educational sessions are planned for the 14 students who did not sign up for the program and that the extracurricular ban remains in effect for them.

The punishment was ordered after officials discovered that 42 teen-agers had chartered two buses stocked with alcoholic beverages to transport them to a March 14 campus dance.

Three adult chaperons aboard one of the buses were arrested after a fight that broke out when school officials and Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies discovered beer, wine and other alcoholic beverages after the buses arrived at the school.

All 42 students were suspended from class for three days, and the 19 involved in extracurricular activities were barred from participating for the rest of the school year.

District School Supt. Albert D. Marley said Monday that he softened the ban so students could “end the year on a positive note.”

He said the educational program began with four-hour seminars Saturday and Sunday. They will be followed by classroom lectures by the students and parents themselves on the problems of teen-age drinking, and by six hours of community service by the families. Each family must come up with a list of proposed service projects, Marley said.

“I was hopeful that more of the students would be involved, but each family had to see how it fit into their own set of values,” he said.

“On paper, the program looked like more punishment,” said Craig Diamond, 18, student-body president. “I think a lot of kids thought their parents were being punished, too. But it turned out to be the greatest thing,” he said. He said the participants gained an understanding of one another’s positions in give-and-take discussions with school officials.

Diamond’s mother, Doritt, described the educational sessions as “probably the most meaningful family experiences that we’ve had.”