Jordan High Area Revamped

After listening to three hours of impassioned testimony, the Los Angeles Board of Education voted unanimously Monday to alter the boundary for South Gate High School and send hundreds of students to Jordan High School in Watts next fall.

The 7-0 vote to change the attendance boundary ended a months-long debate over how to solve overcrowding at South Gate High, a year-round school with an enrollment of 3,000 students.

The predominantly Latino South Gate community had argued that Jordan, which is 70% black, is unsafe and academically inferior.

Parents of South Gate students said they were willing to settle for temporary classrooms on or near the campus or to have their children bused to distant schools in the San Fernando Valley rather than have them attend Jordan, less than a mile away.

‘Hell, no, we won’t go,’ parents shouted about sending youngsters to schools in Watts.

The board’s action moves the Jordan High attendance boundary east a few blocks from Alameda Street to Long Beach Boulevard. Starting in September, about 200 South Gate eighth graders living in that area will have to attend Jordan.

In addition, older students already attending South Gate High will have a one-time option of staying there or switching to Jordan, and any 8th- to 12th-grade students moving into the new attendance area will automatically be assigned to Jordan.

In all, about 250 South Gate students will be affected by the change this fall.

Board member Larry Gonzalez, who proposed the boundary change, said that in addition to solving the overcrowding at South Gate, the new attendance line will help halt the lack of full use of Jordan, which has space for 600 more students than the 1,100 enrolled there.

‘It’s Incredible’

“If we have 600 available classroom spaces in or around an overcrowded community, we need to utilize them,” Gonzalez said at the meeting. “How can this Board of Education continue to battle with the Legislature for additional state monies (to build new schools), how can we argue for using empty schools in nearby districts when we have turned our back on these 600 classroom spaces? It’s incredible.”

Although overcrowding was the issue this year, the boundary dispute recalled an earlier battle over the two schools. Twenty-two years ago, a black Jordan student, Mary Ellen Crawford, requested permission to attend South Gate High, then mostly white. When the board turned her down, a lawsuit was filed that resulted in the mandatory busing of Los Angeles district students in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

In the 1960s, parents of South Gate students cited reports of crime and the low academic performance of Jordan students as a means of opposing integration with the Watts school.

Separate City

South Gate is a separate municipality, but South Gate High School has been a part of the Los Angeles district since 1931.

Although South Gate has changed demographically, the complaints about Jordan have remained the same. Parents say Jordan is ridden with problems, most notably some of the lowest test scores and attendance rates in the school district, and is a center of gang-related activity.

“Why should South Gate students be forced to fill Jordan’s vacuum?” asked John Trujillo, parent of a South Gate student who said he and other parents fear that their children will be exposed to gang violence, drugs and a poor learning environment at Jordan.

Many speakers supporting the boundary change were jeered by the South Gate contingent. One of them, Jordan senior Willie Hardie, barely managed to finish his brief statement.

‘Rights of Others’

“My biggest problem,” he said, addressing parents of South Gate students, “has been getting you to see me . . . . It is unfortunate that people have caused you to believe that I do not care for educational programs, the rights of others, the concern for property and (to believe) that violence is my way of life.”

Hardie said if the parents made an effort to meet Jordan students, their fears would disappear.

At one point during the meeting, board member Rita Walters was shouted down by parents of South Gate students when she called Alameda Street a “Mason-Dixon Line” between the two communities.

When it was all over, many South Gate parents, who had shouted, “Hell, no, we won’t go” earlier in the meeting, said they would move out of South Gate or send their children to schools in other communities.

South Gate Mayor Bill DeWitt criticized the school board for “selling South Gate down the river.” He said the city plans to sue the board on the grounds that the boundary change discriminates against Latinos.