DATE: Thursday, September 11, 1997          TAG: 9709110567

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A6   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY LORRAINE EATON, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:   64 lines

PARENTS, POLICE KNOW: BORED, UNSUPERVISED YOUTHS CAN BE TROUBLE

David Culpepper is a parent, and he's also a pusher.

``If you're going to be a parent, you've got to be a pusher,'' said Culpepper. ``Push music on them. Push sports on them. Push work on them.''

Culpepper, who has a 13-year old daughter and a grown son, instinctively knows what a report released Wednesday lays out with hard numbers: Kids who simply hang out after school get into trouble.

The report by the private group Fight Crime: Invest in Kids found that most violent juvenile crime occurs between 2 p.m. and 8 p.m., between the end of the school day and the time parents return home from work. The report and the Clinton administration are calling for increased funding for after-school programs to drive those numbers down.

Locally, the findings ring true. In Virginia Beach, for example, more assaults and robberies are committed by juveniles between 2 and 6 p.m. on weekdays than at any other time.

But it's not just violent crime that escalates when the dismissal bell rings. Students who don't participate in extracurricular activities are more than twice as likely to become teen parents or get arrested than students who are occupied after school, according to psychologist and researcher Nicholas Zill, of Rockville, Md., who has studied after-school behaviors. Those students are three times more likely to be suspended from school and six times more likely to drop out.

Teens will do anything to relieve the boredom of the unstructured hours, said Randy Vazquez, a senior at Salem High in Virginia Beach. A recent fad is the use of ``potato guns,'' guns made with PVC pipe and propane fuel, Randy said. A potato shot out of such a gun looks like french fries after it hits a chain link fence.

But time alone after school is not the crucial risk factor, according to ``A Matter of Time,'' a report by the nonprofit Carnegie Corporation of New York. Rather it's what young people do during free time, where they do it and with whom that leads to positive or negative consequences.

One problem with keeping older youth occupied is that most after-school programs are directed toward younger children. And many of those that do serve teens are underfunded. Local clubs operate on tight budgets that are largely dependent on the good will and donations from the community.

``This club keeps a lot of them off the street,'' said Cynthia Joyce, assistant director of the Campostella Boys & Girls Club in Norfolk, a club that serves 65 youths each day and that has weathered serious funding woes. ``I think a lot of them would be lost without it.''

While Wednesday's call was for more funding for after-school programs, local parents say that they themselves should shoulder much of the burden of keeping their children out of trouble.

Culpepper makes sure that his daughter, Courtney, is plenty busy after school. The eighth-grader at Alliance Christian School in Portsmouth practices with the tennis team each day until about 5:30 p.m., when her father picks her up on his way home from work. This summer she spent 12 or more hours a day day at a horse camp, trading labor for riding privileges. She takes piano lessons and earns money cutting grass.

But boredom breeds trouble. Even if your child is occupied, others aren't.

``Lots of parents let their kids run free,'' said Gary Winther, whose daughter, Tina, 16, is a junior at Wilson High School in Portsmouth. ``It makes it hard for parents who do care.''

Tina spends her after-school hours at tennis practice during the season. And the rest of the year, her dad keeps tabs on her after school activities by ``calling her, checking up on her, and surprising her. I do a whole lot of that,'' he said.

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