TEENS LIVING WITH DANGER

Survey: Drugs, Alcohol, Violence Factors For Many Santa Clara County Youths.

Despite its reputation for low crime and safe neighborhoods, Santa
Clara County can be a risky place for adolescents, an extensive,
first-of-a-kind study suggests.

Of 2,964 high school students surveyed by local health authorities,
one in six -- or 16.5 percent -- said they had carried a knife, gun,
club or other weapon in the previous 30 days. And one in about 12 --
or 8.1 percent -- reported having a weapon with them at school.

During the previous year, more than one out of three -- or 34.6
percent -- said their property had been stolen or deliberately damaged
at school, and 22.3 percent said they had seriously considered suicide.

On the positive side, the survey found youngsters here to be
significantly less likely than their peers statewide and across the
nation to have used alcohol, marijuana and most other drugs. Even so,
local officials found cause for concern there.

In the 30 days before being interviewed, 27.2 percent of the students
said they rode with a driver who had consumed alcohol. Moreover, of
the 2,105 local middle-school youngsters who also were surveyed,
nearly half -- or 48 percent -- said they began drinking alcohol
before they were 13. By comparison, about 28 percent of the high
school kids reported drinking that young.

''It's disturbing,'' said Guadalupe Olivas, Santa Clara County's
public health director. ``Santa Clara County, I think, you can
characterize as being relatively safe. But we have some alarming
trends that we have to pay particular attention to. . . . Unless we
want our community to become like other places that are having
problems, we need to focus on prevention.''

Indeed, some of the survey data on weapons possession and violence are
being highlighted in a proposed violence prevention plan that is
scheduled to be discussed by the county board of supervisors Tuesday.
The plan, which was put together by health officials and others,
recommends everything from more violence prevention training for
teachers to tougher controls on local handgun sales.

The survey, which was conducted last winter with the permission of
students' parents and released Friday, included a variety of questions
about risky adolescent behavior and only partly focused on problems at
schools. Still, those school-related responses are particularly
timely, given several recent incidents.

On Friday, a 15-year-old San Jose boy who apparently sneaked a loaded
gun onto the Independence High School campus accidentally shot himself
in the leg about 2:30 p.m. Police say the gun discharged when the
youth removed it from a backpack to show a fellow student. He was
taken to San Jose Medical Center, where he was admitted in stable
condition with a bullet wound in his shin.

Another violent incident occurred Thursday at Mission San Jose High
School in Fremont. Police said a young man there was beaten
unconscious by a group of students wielding golf clubs and baseball
bats during lunch in the campus parking lot.

And last month at San Ramon Valley High School, students severely beat
a youngster from a rival school after a football game.

Altogether, 669 cases of battery were reported in Santa Clara County
schools during the 1995-96 school year, the most recent data
available, according to local health officials. That includes 89
incidents of assault with a deadly weapon, 36 sex offenses and 265
cases of weapon-possession violations.

Of the high school students questioned in the survey, 14.4 percent
said they had gotten into a fight at school during the past year and
7.4 percent said they had been threatened or injured with a weapon on
campus over the same period. And 4.9 percent reported feeling too
unsafe to go to school on at least one day during the previous month.

''We're seeing more and more kids coming to school with fewer and
fewer social skills,'' said Linda Bonin, who oversees a variety of
health and safety programs for the Santa Clara County Office of
Education. Even so, she insisted, prevention efforts should be
targeted at the community as a whole, rather than at local campuses.

``The schools are probably some of the safest places out there,''
Bonin said. ``I think the schools are really doing an adequate job if
not better than adequate.''

Not surprisingly, the study found boys to be generally more likely
than girls to report getting into fights, carrying weapons and having
their property stolen or damaged.

Among high school students, Latino youngsters were most likely to
report having brought a weapon to school, the survey found.
African-American students were most likely to say they were afraid to
go to school, and white youngsters reported the highest incidence of
having their property stolen or damaged.

Ninth-graders were more likely than older high school students to
report being in fights or having weapons on school property.

Mercury News Staff Writer Bill Romano contributed to this
report.

Checked-by: Patrick Henry