School Officials at Open Hearing Refuse to Expel 4 Blacks : Discipline: Supporters say the students, who were accused of robbery, are victims of prejudice. But trustees and sheriff’s representatives deny the charges.

Over administrators’ objections, trustees in the Antelope Valley Union High School District refused to expel four black basketball players accused of attempted robbery in a case that also exposed the growing racial tensions in the area.

After an emotional three-hour hearing, held in public at the request of the students’ parents, the board early Thursday voted 5 to 0 to allow the four teen-agers to return to Antelope Valley High School. Supt. Kenneth Brummel had urged they not be allowed to return to the school this semester.

“We’re convinced a lesson has been learned. Heaven help you if that lesson hasn’t been learned,” said board member Jarold Wright, addressing the four students at the end of what school officials called the first expulsion hearing in their memory held in public. “If you ever appear before this board again, you’ve had it,” he said.

The students and their parents joined with classmates, some black and some white, and other supporters from the black community to demand leniency. They said the four were victims of a racial backlash against blacks by whites who believe that blacks are responsible for growing gang violence in the area.

“We have to address ourselves to what caused this to escalate to the point where it became a black-white, a gang thing,” said Jewel Junior, the mother of one of the youths. She and the others said school officials and Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies overreacted, mistakenly thinking the four were gang members.

The only black member of the school board, President Larry Rucker, sided with the crowd. “Some of it is racism, no question about it,” Rucker said. He said black students are being disciplined more stiffly than others and warned “this valley is going to have one heck of a time” unless that changes.

But school and sheriff’s officials denied that a double standard exists for black students. And fellow board member Steve Landaker later angrily denounced Rucker’s remarks as garbage.

“I don’t buy it,” Landaker said of the racism charges.

The episode began the afternoon of Dec. 14 when the four black students surrounded a car of four white students in the school parking lot. One of the black students allegedly placed a gun to the head of one of the passengers and demanded money. The black student said he was only wearing a black glove and pointed his finger at the white student’s temple.

No one was injured and no money was taken. But the four black students were arrested the next day after school officials learned of the incident. The four were charged with attempted armed robbery. A Juvenile Court judge last month rejected that charge but sustained misdemeanor assault charges against them. They face sentencing Feb. 28.

In testimony before the school board Wednesday night, the four teen-agers, all reserves on the high school’s varsity basketball team, acknowledged their role in the incident. But they insisted they meant it only as a joke and claimed that the white students in the car understood they were just joking.

“I think this case has been escalated to a higher level than it should have been,” said Kevin Junior, 17, who admitted seeking money from the student in the car. “I admit it, now that I think about it, that it was a bad joke. Look where it got us,” he said.

Junior and the other three players--Martine Stokes, 17, Herbert Sellers, 17, and Joseph Montgomery, 16--spent five days in custody in Juvenile Hall after their arrest. All four have been suspended from school since Dec. 15, but were given permission to return Thursday.

The four will not return to the basketball team this season, however, because they are academically ineligible.