Cruise Control : Golf Carts at Gardena High Help Supervisors Save Steps, Time

Last month, when a student at Gardena High School was stabbed during a fight, administrators got to the scene in seconds by hopping onto a golf cart.

Golf carts have been used to patrol campuses for at least 10 years in the Los Angeles Unified School District, but they are being used for the first time this school year at Gardena High.

45-Acre Campus

And they are especially useful there--not so much to control crime, which has never been a major problem, officials say, but just to get around the 45-acre campus, the second largest in the district after the 68-acre Birmingham High campus in the San Fernando Valley.

In addition to the usual athletic fields and tennis courts, the Gardena campus includes a 10-acre farm, complete with horses, pigs, sheep and a garden patch, where senior citizens grow sugar cane, corn and other vegetables.

With such a large campus to patrol, “sometimes, to be in a place where we were really needed was difficult,” Principal Tamotsu Ikeda said. “I couldn’t demand that administrators walk the campus on a daily basis. How can you do it?”

Two of the carts, both used, were purchased for about $1,500 last year, Ikeda said. The third, also used, came from an anonymous donor.

It takes students in the agriculture program about 10 minutes to walk from classrooms on the west end of the campus to the farm on the east side, but an administrator in a golf cart can make the trip in about 2 minutes.

Every hour between classes, Ikeda or one of his four assistant principals patrols the areas between classroom buildings, making sure students are orderly and get to classes on time. “The more we circulate, the better the discipline of the campus, because students see us more,” Ikeda said.

He said students quickly grew accustomed to seeing him gliding around campus in one of the battery-powered carts, which have a maximum speed of about 10 m.p.h.

“Our problem is trying to secure the perimeters of the school,” Ikeda said. “Generally speaking, it’s not the students who cause the problems, it’s outsiders.”

Vandalism Most Common

According to district statistics, vandalism, mostly graffiti, accounted for more than two-thirds of the crime reported at the school last year. Disputes between students and occasional gang-related fights account for the few serious disruptions, Ikeda said.

Outsiders were involved in a gang-related stabbing in the cafeteria in November, Ikeda said. A Gardena High student brought two friends from Gardena’s nearby adult school program to help him fight another Gardena student, but was himself stabbed, the principal said. The student recovered and was suspended, and the police investigation is still under way.

Using a golf cart, administrators arrived at the scene in seconds, Ikeda said, and may have prevented the fight from escalating.

Although the golf cart was not used to carry the stabbing victim, school officials have used the carts as on-campus emergency vehicles to transport injured students to the nurse’s office, Ikeda said.

Administrators at three other district high schools--Birmingham, Fremont and Canoga Park--also use golf carts.

Prefers Walking

During his daily patrols at the 37-acre Fremont High campus in Los Angeles, Principal John Haydel prefers walking to riding in one of the school’s two golf carts.

But Assistant Principal Al Morrison said the carts “save miles and miles of walking. In the athletic area, you have so much space and only one individual to patrol that area.” Without carts, a supervisor would “walk his or her legs off,” he said.

At Birmingham High in Van Nuys, custodial workers use the carts, but Principal Mary Farrell said she prefers to walk around the 68-acre campus.

“You learn to get out there and just be visible,” Farrell said, adding that she wears a pair of flat shoes as recommended by her podiatrist.

At many Los Angeles Unified District schools, the teachers help supervise students between classes, but since supervisors started using golf carts at Gardena High, the teachers have been freed from that duty, Ikeda said.

The teachers now have more time to teach, Ikeda said, allowing administrators to “do what we’re supposed to do, and that’s supervise the youngsters.”