Students Wary After School Fights

LAPD officers stood guard Tuesday near the front courtyard at Jefferson High School. Inside, administrators enforced their new policy banning heavy belt buckles and white T-shirts while students discussed ways of reducing violence during a “day of dialogue.”

But nearly two weeks after two racially charged brawls left several people injured, many students say they still don’t feel safe. And some, like senior Shameka Bryant, have stayed away.

“[I don’t] feel comfortable about coming,” said Bryant, who has only attended school three times in the last two weeks. “I don’t know what can be done.”

Her fellow students “can’t have pride and respect for themselves if they keep going around pounding on each other.”

Jefferson High School, with an enrollment of about 2,400 students, has seen attendance drop by more than half on some days. The day after the first brawl on April 14, 1,346 students were absent. Attendance began to creep up, until the second melee on April 18. The day after that, nearly 1,100 stayed home. By last Friday, the absentee number had dropped to 585. It was at 385 as of Tuesday -- still higher than normal, but the best number since before the melees.

Some worry the absenteeism is making it hard to move forward with the curriculum. Bryant said when she returned to school last week to pick up missed assignments, many of her teachers said she hadn’t missed much because so many students hadn’t shown up. The students who did attend spent some classroom time discussing the violence, she said.

“Kids vote with their feet,” said Philip Saldivar, the Los Angeles Unified School District’s director for the District 5 area in South Los Angeles where Jefferson is located. “If they don’t feel safe, they’ll walk.”

Saldivar and other officials said they had been feverishly working to rebuild community trust in Jefferson, and the problems with attendance had been an alarming signal that those efforts might not be working.

Already, the district has banned white T-shirts, which officials believe sometimes signal gang affiliation. Heavy belt buckles with logos are also prohibited, because of their links to gangs and because they could be used as weapons. Officials have also split lunch period into two sessions to avoid large groups of students congregating.

Saldivar has stood at the school’s main entrance each school day in the last week, greeting parents and fielding their questions. He said many parents wondered whether it was safe to send their children back to Jefferson, and much of what the district is doing is designed to make them feel comfortable about letting their children return.

“If the climate of the school is safe, they will be here,” Saldivar said. “We have to make sure parents, students and staff promote a safe environment.”

On Tuesday, the school held a “day of dialogue” in which students were encouraged to discuss their thoughts on the melees and talk about ways to make the campus safer. Students said they spoke about the tense relationship between Latino and black students, and many said they believed the atmosphere was still charged enough for another disturbance to occur. Jefferson’s population is about 92% Latino and about 7% black.

Angela Germany, 16, attended one of the discussions. She moved from Arizona to South Los Angeles to live with her aunt last year. But after the violence, she said she planned to return to Arizona in July.

“I’m going back after the end of the semester due to the fights,” she said. “I’m scared, I’m nervous. I’m not really used to this type of environment.... You can’t walk down the street without someone looking at you funny because of the color you have on.”

After one of the fights, her mother called her from Arizona and ordered her not to go back to school for several days.

“I was missing out on a lot of stuff that’s important to me -- like education,” Germany said.

The first brawl involved about 100 students near the cafeteria. Three students were hurt. In the second, more than 100 black and Latino students got into another lunchtime fight that officials said had links to a gang dispute. Six students were detained and two of them were arrested. Another student suffered a broken hip.

Stephanie Alonzo, 15, said her good friend was knocked down and kicked during the first brawl. Her friend was so shaken that she doesn’t plan to return to Jefferson until next semester, Alonzo said.

As for herself, Alonzo said she took three days off last week until things seemed to cool down. But she remains pessimistic that the racial tensions will ease anytime soon.

She admits her solution for ending lunchtime violence is depressing: “I think blacks and Mexicans should be separated.”

While some students welcomed the new security measures, others considered them draconian and ineffective.

Daniel Rios, 14, is one of a group of Latino students who have been wearing brown shirts as a sign of unity.

“It was saying that we’re here and that we have pride in each other and we’re not going to let nobody talk stuff about us,” said Rios, who like Alonzo was skeptical that race relations would improve on campus.

“Ain’t nowhere in L.A. safe,” Rios said. “You just have to adapt to your environment.”

But Rios’ English teacher, Bret Bunke, struck a somewhat more optimistic note.

While school officials were dismayed by the number of absences, Bunke said he was hopeful that attendance would eventually get back to normal.

“Students are coming back,” Bunke said. “There isn’t a single teacher who wouldn’t say, ‘I’m going to make this a better place for students.’ ”

The racial problems, he said, stem not just from students but from outside gang pressure that has spilled into the classroom. He said some of his students said that outsiders jumped a campus gate before the first fight and helped instigate the violence.

He knows that some of the new rules, such as requiring students to tuck in their shirts, are not popular. But he said everyone needs to start focusing again on learning.

“I don’t even notice when they have their shirts untucked. I’ve been up to my ears in ‘Romeo and Juliet.’ ”