Bias Charge Upsets Gompers School : Mother Says Girl, 14, Deserves a Top Spot on Science Team

A parent’s charges that a Gompers Secondary School teacher is conducting a “personal vendetta” against her 14-year-old daughter has brought controversy to a team of students as it prepares to represent California in a national science competition.

Mary Rowe, mother of Gompers ninth-grader Erica Rowe, is scheduled to tell the Board of Education today that her daughter is being kept out of the competition because Martin Teachworth is racially biased against the black student and has a “personal vendetta” against her.

“He is trying to run my kid down,” said Rowe, a guidance counselor at Twain Independent Learning Center. “I’m not going to let him do that. I’m going to ruin his reputation. He does not know who he’s bothering with. I haven’t worked all my life to put my child in a private school, (and later) to put her in the best school in San Diego, to let him do this.”

Rowe’s charges led to Teachworth’s resignation as coach of the team Thursday, when Gompers Vice Principal Vivienne Burrell ordered him to add Erica to the team. On Friday, he rejoined the team after Assistant Supt. Albert Cook overruled Burrell and let Teachworth’s original roster stand.

Teachworth, who was ordered by Vice Principal Michael Price not to talk to reporters, declined to answer questions.

But Brenda Lantow, a Gompers teacher and team manager, said that Teachworth must choose among students just as the district’s athletic coaches do--and is bound to disappoint some children.

“You only have so many wide receivers. You only have so many quarterbacks. And if they’re going for the same position, they’re not all going to get to play,” she said.

School district Supt. Thomas Payzant said, “I don’t think it’s appropriate for a dozen other people to be second-guessing” the coach.

“From everything I know at this time, a reasonable effort has been made in selecting the participants and the alternates for the Science Olympiad, and we ought to allow the decisions made at the site to stand,” Payzant said.

Gompers’ Science Olympiad team has generated some excitement and school spirit at the school, which has no sports teams to add those important intangibles to the campus atmosphere. The junior (seventh through ninth grade) and senior (10th through 12th grade) teams also provided a feather for the school district’s cap when they outclassed other Southern California teams last month and won the right to represent the state in the national competition.

The school board honored the students and teachers at a board meeting. Corporate and private donors then pitched in, raising in less than three weeks the $17,000 needed to send the team to East Lansing, Mich., for the National Science Olympiad involving teams from 38 other states.

Fifteen students on the junior team will compete Saturday in 24 events, including computer programming, meteorology, anatomy, and other more esoteric contests such as playing tunes on bottles filled with water. Erica is one of four alternates who will make the trip.

Rowe contends that her daughter scored better in tryouts for the national competition than some students who were selected, and that Teachworth unfairly aided students competing against Erica for the final spot open to ninth-graders.

“He put people who were good in one event on the team, whereas I did well in many events, and he didn’t put me on the team,” Erica said.

“I guess he doesn’t like a black child having that much intelligence. I guess he can’t handle a girl of that intelligence being in a black body,” Rowe said.

One other black student made the team.

Rowe said she has approached black ministers to rally support for her daughter and will ask the school board today to add Erica to the team.

“I have not given up. There is no way that I’m going to roll over and die on this one,” she said.