Family Seeks Protection : Racism Charged in Moorpark Schools

The parents of a black Moorpark high school student whose car was vandalized have charged that the local school district has failed to protect their son against acts of racism.

Theodore Green, the father of Moorpark Memorial High School senior Andre Green, said Monday that his son has been the target of at least two racially motivated attacks since the family moved to the eastern Ventura County city in May, 1985.

Green and his wife, Jacqueline, said they will ask the Moorpark school board Tuesday to provide them with assurances that their two children are protected from further racist attacks.

On Nov. 7, nine cars belonging to members of the high school football team, including Green, and the school’s cheerleading squad were vandalized at the school while the group was at a football game in Santa Barbara, Green said. A racial epithet had been scratched on the roof of his son’s car, he said.

“I am absolutely certain that the incident was racially motivated,” Green said.

But officials of the Moorpark Unified School District said the vandalism was more likely a random act.

Ventura County sheriff’s deputies arrested two 17-year-old youths from the Thousand Oaks area Monday in connection with the vandalism, Sgt. Kathy Cullins said.

Cullins would not identify the youths and said she had no details on a motive for the vandalism. An investigation is continuing and might result in more arrests, she said.

“It’s real hard for me to conclude that it was racism when it’s one black student out of 10 cars that were vandalized,” said Cary Dritz, principal of the school. “Possibly it was students who have some anger toward the athletic program or toward the athletes.”

District Superintendent Michael Slater denied that there is racial tension in the predominantly white school district. About 5% of the high school’s approximately 700 students are black, Dritz said.

Jacqueline Green said that Andre was told by one of his teachers last year that if he misbehaved in class he would be “sent back to Watts.” Green said her younger son, a sixth-grader, has been taunted with racial remarks while riding the bus to school.

Andre Green was suspended for three days last year after breaking the nose of a student who called him a racial name, his mother said. He was also ejected from a football game for fighting after an opponent allegedly made racial remarks, Moorpark coach Robert Noel said.

“Sometimes I wonder if they want the blacks here to move out,” Theodore Green said. “But we’re not going to move anywhere.”

A representative of the Ventura County chapter of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People is also expected to address the school board on the issue, Green said.