Complaint Cites Schools for Refusing Transfer

A Watts mother of 10 has filed a federal civil rights complaint against the Los Angeles Unified School District for refusing to allow her son to attend a junior high school outside the gang-plagued neighborhood where they live.

The complaint, filed with the Department of Justice, alleges that the district violated Linda Lofton’s right to “educate her child in a safe environment conducive to learning” when it would not bus her son away from his neighborhood to Nobel Junior High School in the San Fernando Valley.

Lofton, 35, said she has kept her 12-year-old son, Ramon Atchison, at home since the beginning of the school year rather than send him to Charles Drew Junior High, the local school. But school officials said Friday that Lofton must enroll her child in Drew before they can consider permitting him to transfer.