Reaction Mixed in Boycott of Jordan High Over Safety

Stanley Scott missed school again.

On Tuesday, the slightly built 15-year-old Jordan High School student was playing with a few small children between rows of battered blue apartment buildings in the Imperial Courts city housing project in Watts. Part of the reason he was not in school was fear.

“Over there (at Jordan), if they know where you live, they mess with you,” Scott said. “They pick and push on you. They hit on you. . . . They ask you what set (gang) you are from. I tell them I don’t gang-bang. But they don’t care.”

Gang members from a rival housing project, he said, have told him, “If you come back, we’ll mop and hard-hat you . . . beat you up and beat you down.”

Watching from a doorway, Lynette Scott said her son misses enough school because of his asthma problem. But the gang problem is just too much. “I don’t want him to get killed,” she said.

A few blocks away in front of David Starr Jordan High School, several students were not frightened, but angry. They said their school was getting a bum rap.

Steve Barrow, a Jordan ninth-grader who lives in the Imperial Courts area and was in school Tuesday, said he has been challenged by students from other areas. But he insisted that it’s not a big problem and “it doesn’t happen regularly.”

“I’ve been going here four years and I’ve never been hassled,” said Mario Holley, student body vice president. “It’s not really Jordan High. It (the gang problem) is outside. . . . We are well protected by security.”

How safe is Jordan? The debate continued to heat up Tuesday, the first school day since a group of parents in the Imperial Courts projects stunned school officials Friday by calling a press conference to announce that their children were no longer attending classes because they were being terrorized.

School officials continued their efforts Tuesday to show that Jordan is basically safe, but school police crime statistics showed the 1,900-student campus reported 30 assaults and robberies last year, more than any other high school campus in the Los Angeles school district. So far this school year, with 14 assaults and robberies, it is running second behind George Washington High School.

Principal’s Viewpoint

“The school is as safe or safer than the community,” said Jordan Principal Grace Strauther. “But we know we are in one of the highest crime areas. There are community problems out there.”

Although they could not immediately provide a breakdown, school officials said they believe many of the crimes reported by school district police occurred at the perimeter of the campus, which is next door to the crime- and drug-plagued Jordan Downs housing project.

Gang members from Jordan Downs are the ones harassing and threatening their students, according to the Imperial Courts parents. Imperial Courts has its own gang.

Leaders of the protesting parents, who are seeking a U.S. Department of Education investigation of conditions at the school, said Tuesday they were not satisfied with the response of the school district and will hold a meeting Saturday to reaffirm their demand that their children be transferred to schools out of the area.

“They don’t want to talk about it,” Gwen Johnson, one of the protest organizers, said of school officials. “They don’t give a damn.”

Teachers at Jordan said they have been trying to address the problem of getting Imperial Courts students safely to Jordan for some time. L. H. Foster, dean of students and head of the teachers union at the school, said she and other teachers tried years ago to get the district to provide bus transportation for Imperial Courts students, both to improve attendance and provide safety.

School officials acknowledged Tuesday that they could have moved sooner to deal with complaints from Imperial Courts residents, which began to surface in an organized way several weeks ago. But they insisted that they are now trying to address the parents’ concerns.

Determination Told

“The most important thing is to get those kids in school,” said school board member Warren Furutani, who represents the Jordan area. “We are not giving up.”

Some of the obvious solutions--such as ensuring Imperial Courts students safe passage to school on a district bus--have to be considered carefully, district officials said. By putting all of the Imperial Courts students on one bus, they could become a bigger target for gangs from rival neighborhoods.

And for some Imperial Courts parents, the idea of sending their students off to campuses across town is not appealing. “Personally, I would like for them to clean up Jordan, so (students) can go to the community school,” said parent Alec Ragsdale.

Ragsdale, whose son has not attended school for several months, said he thinks some of the Imperial Courts teen-agers who are having problems may be courting trouble with the way they dress and whom they associate with.

“Every kid that is going to Jordan is not” getting in fights and being threatened, he said.

Just how many Imperial Courts students have been missing school as part of an organized protest remains unclear. Protest organizers have said about 100 students are staying home out of fear, but school officials say a protest petition they received listed only 21 students.

Only 14 Enrolled

School officials Tuesday said just 14 of the 21 on the list are enrolled. There was either no record of the remainder or efforts to get them to attend school had been unsuccessful, Strauther said.

From a stroll through Imperial Courts, it was clear that many students were not attending school. Some cited safety concerns. One 16-year-old 10th-grader, who refused to be named, said the problem has grown worse this year. He said he was jumped several times by rival gang members at the school and has stayed home since November. “There’s older dudes been coming up to the school,” he said.

Another 15-year-old who was playing basketball in the project gym said he quit going to school last December. “I just stopped because nobody else was going,” he said.