Parents Protest Busing of Students From School Shut by Tarry Seepage

As hundreds of children began boarding school buses, more than 100 angry parents Wednesday protested the busing of students from Park Avenue Elementary School in Cudahy, where a tar-like substance seeping into the schoolyard forced the school’s closure.

Of the 650 students enrolled at Park Avenue, 244 failed to report for school Wednesday, school officials said, many of them kept at home by parents who opposed their busing to a South-Central Los Angeles school where they feared possible gang violence.

Carrying placards and shouting, “Hell no! We won’t go,” the parents said they were not sending their children to Russell Elementary School seven miles away because it is too far from their community and located in a neighborhood they consider unsafe.

“It is a bad, rough, gang-troubled area,” said George Perez, a parent and one of the leaders of the protest.

Dispel Notion

School officials, however, sought to dispel the notion that Russell Elementary is unsafe and told parents that violence is not a problem at the school.

Los Angeles Unified School District Supt. Leonard Britton last week issued an order closing the year-round Park Avenue school after the Environmental Protection Agency took samples of the substance in the schoolyard and launched an investigation into it earlier this month.

For years, The tar-like ooze has periodically seeped through the playground asphalt. Parents of some students attributed their children’s skin rashes to the substance, although school officials said there was no evidence that it had made anyone sick.

Of the 244 students who did not report for classes Wednesday, school officials said 23 were absent because of illness.

Some parents, such as Perez, said they would keep their children home until school officials decided to transfer them to schools in the Cudahy area.

“I’ll teach my children at home,” said Delia Ramirez, a mother of an 8-year-old third-grader and a 9-year-old fourth-grader.

‘Stressed Out’

Bernice Garcia, 15, picketing with her mother, Anna Garcia, said her sister, Vanessa, an 11-year-old sixth-grader, was “too stressed out” to ride the bus.

“This whole thing has made her sick. She is stressed from what is happening here,” Anna Garcia said in Spanish.

School district officials said Russell Elementary at Firestone Boulevard and Hooper Avenue is not plagued by gangs.

“Russell is a nice school. It is not in the middle of gang territory,” said Maria Casillas, superintendent for the school district region that includes Cudahy.

Some Russell schoolteachers and administrators were on hand to greet the arriving Park Avenue students.

“We are hurt by the image portraying our school as gang-infested. It isn’t,” teacher Devota Thomas said.

The move drew mixed reviews from the students.

A 10-year-old sixth-grader in teacher Francis Copeland-Newman’s class at Russell, did not like the idea.

“I don’t live near here. I walked to Park Avenue. I wish I was back there,” she said.

A preliminary investigation by a private consultant for the school district indicates that the substance oozing from beneath the asphalt “is highly acidic.” Health and environmental agency officials have said that students could be endangered only if they eat the substance or come into prolonged contact with it.

A portion of the school is built on a landfill, and the tar-like substance is believed to come from the refuse and petroleum products that were dumped there.

School officials said it could take anywhere from 12 to 18 months to assess the extent of the problem. The EPA test results are expected within three months.