Cooperation Marks Session on Assaults : Molestations: Parents, school officials and police outline ways to safeguard children from further attacks.

RESEDA — There was no shouting this time as parents, school officials and police got together Wednesday to talk about the molester who has stalked nearly three dozen San Fernando Valley schoolchildren.

Unlike a mid-November meeting, when parents angry about the way the case had progressed shouted down representatives of the schools and the Los Angeles Police Department, about 75 residents who had gathered at Reseda High School listened politely as parents and officials outlined ways to safeguard their children against further attacks.

Some explained programs at work in their communities, like a safe corridor program that stations adults on street corners near El Camino High School. Other parents outlined new ideas, like a project to open school gates one hour earlier so that children of working parents could be escorted to school.

One woman, Ellen Snortland, had parents and some students on their feet, practicing yelling “No!”

“If you can teach your kids how to make a scene, it will really help,” Snortland said.

This time, many parents said, they were there to listen and find new ways to combine their efforts to make the Valley safe for their children.

“Until parents get involved and realize it can happen to them, this guy is going to keep going,” said John Russell, the father of three children who came to the meeting with his wife, Catherine. “The only way we’re going to stop him is together.”

One program designed to deter vandalism at El Camino High also keeps students safe on their way to school, said Judith Fischer.

The School-Community Alliance, initiated this fall, stations adult members of the community throughout a four-block radius surrounding the school.

The program began as a response to increasing graffiti and break-ins around the school, which is bordered on three sides by private homes, Fischer said. A core group of about six residents decided that an adult presence before and after school could provide a way to demonstrate community pride to the students.

“What we have really set up is a safety zone for students coming to and from school,” Fischer said. “We say good morning to the students, how is it going, happy holidays, have a great weekend.

“The students feel we are a friendly force in the community.”

The core group, now expanded to about 10 people, wears school colors and El Camino baseball caps to identify themselves. They also pass out flyers introducing themselves and describing their mission to homes in the area.

“One by one, we all can work together,” Fischer said. “It started with simply a few people talking together and deciding to take control of the community.”

Detective Bud Meringer of the LAPD reviewed safety techniques, reminding parents of three rules to teach their children: Say no to strangers who ask for directions or offer rides, run away and tell an adult.

Other participants in the forum, which was sponsored by the 31st District of the PTA and City Councilwoman Laura Chick, were more impromptu, sharing their ideas from their seats.

Diana Dixon-Davis, a PTA chapter board member speaking only for herself, suggested that the schools open an hour earlier in the mornings, at an estimated cost of $593,000, so that working parents could bring their children to school.

Schools typically open the gates half an hour before school begins, Dixon-Davis said. That leaves many children to either walk alone to school or be dropped off by working parents only to wait unprotected at the locked gate.

“It’s not only intervention that we need to focus on, it’s prevention,” Chick said. “It’s making our schools and neighborhoods safe and secure . . . to start building the kind of neighborhoods that some of us here remember.”

As police continued to scour the Valley in search of the molester, one Encino school got a little help from an unexpected source: a private Beverly Hills-based security firm owned by a parent of one of its fifth-grade students.

The security firm posted four guards with walkie-talkies on the perimeter of Encino Elementary and will pay for the guards to be there between 7 and 8:30 a.m., said spokesman Chris Younger.

Times staff writer Josh Meyer contributed to this report.