Surprise Hit of the Season: Chula Vista Council Video

Beginning in January, the Chula Vista City Council started televising its meetings. Are Mayor Greg Cox and the five council members a possible find for network television?

“The biggest surprise has been the demand for tapes of the telecasts,” said Mark S. Cox, public information coordinator for the City of Chula Vista (no relation to the mayor). “The demand lately has been rather large, much more than we anticipated.”

The meetings themselves occur on Tuesdays and are shown on Cox Cable, Channel 25, Wednesday nights at 7. Videos of the telecasts are made available at the Chula Vista Public Library every Thursday.

Cox said no one expected the demand to be high. Truthfully, no one expected a demand.

At first, only one tape was available. The one kept vanishing, as fast as any copy of “Platoon” at local video stores, so another was added. Then another. Now a fourth is contemplated, since the three are leaving on a par with the Jane Fonda workout tape.

What’s going on? Is the Chula Vista City Council foisting budding stars upon the public? Are there council members emerging with an Oliver North-like flair for seizing a public forum?

“Oh, I don’t know,” Cox said sheepishly. “It’s just that we expected no demand. And to find out that three get checked out so quickly kind of astonished us. Something that didn’t exist as an alternative 10 weeks ago is suddenly someone’s inalienable right. And that’s kind of strange, even in Chula Vista.”

A Bear-Able Reward

At Southwest Junior High School in San Ysidro, students--street-wise teen-agers--are being given stuffed teddy bears as a reward for good behavior.

As part of an incentive program for “good citizenship”--showing up on time, being mannerly, doing homework religiously--students are awarded Panda pins from the San Diego Zoo, and ultimately, stuffed teddy bears.

Aren’t teen-agers just a wee bit old for stuffed teddies? “Counselors here have stuffed bears in their offices, and it’s always an interesting thing to watch,” said school principal Louise Bach-Phipps, who, acting on the notion of counselor Mary Johansson, instituted the incentive effort, which works on a point system. Twenty points at the end of the year gets you a teddy.

“Kids under any kind of stress will pick them up and hold them, like a security blanket,” Bach-Phipps said.

She describes Southwest Junior High and the area in which it sits as “rapidly changing. . . . We have the largest percentage of low-income housing in San Diego.” Her hope was for a program that brought recognition to all students, not just those who excel in the classroom or on the playing fields.

“Junior high is a critical time of life,” she said. “It’s when we confront the dropout issue. We work on kids’ self-concepts. We learn so much from kids at this age. Kids--all kids--need recognition. Believe it or not, these little bears can help.”

Seeking a Peace Offering

Shana McReynolds, a 10-year-old who lives in Oceanside, decided that the best way to seek peace was to act. She applied to be one of 200 Americans, who, with 200 Soviets, will march for peace from the steps of the Capitol to the shores of San Francisco this summer.

McReynolds has a problem with money, though, and had to act fast. She wrote to local newspapers:

“I’m a fourth-grader at Casita Elementary School (in Vista), and I’ve been chosen to participate in the International Peace Walk. I will be traveling with my Grandma who begins in Washington, D.C. (sic). My share of cost is $350, which I must try to raise by March 31. I would greatly appreciate it if you would make a donation of any amount.”

Shana lives with her mother, Deborah Newman, and stepfather Glenn Newman, a sales agent for Prudential Insurance Co. As the oldest of five children, the youngest of whom is three months, Shana felt she needed to raise the money herself.

She hopes to join her grandmother, Lois Nicolai, 51, of New Jersey, for the third leg of the walk, which begins in Los Angeles in July and finishes in San Francisco 10 days later. Nicolai will attempt the entire walk, which begins in Washington on June 14.

“Shana’s the only one in school getting to do this,” said her mother. “She’s interested in getting the word out that we want to be friends with the Russians, and do away with nuclear weapons. It’s her way of making a statement. We just don’t have the money to send her. But the way Shana is, I know she can raise it.”