Gompers Meeting Is Marked by Rancor

A raucous, sometimes angry crowd of 200 people Tuesday night vilified both the San Diego police and city schools administrators for their actions during a student demonstration Feb. 23 at Gompers Secondary School, held in support of a teacher who was involuntary transferred from the science, math and computer magnet school.

Numerous students and parent eyewitnesses to the walkout at the Southeast San Diego school said the demonstration was peaceful--in the tradition of protests by black students during the civil rights era of the 1960s--until a large number of police officers appeared and threatened them with night sticks and Mace.

The crowd angrily rejected repeated apologies by Deputy San Diego Police Chief Manuel Guaderrama that the police response was inappropriate because erroneous messages from the police communications center to field units said that students had broken down a school fence and were swarming outside the campus. No students were injured, but school board President Kay Davis has called the lack of violence only a matter of luck.

The Rev. George Stevens, a longtime local black activist, called Guaderrama a liar, saying that “there are too many contradictions” not to believe that the police responded with such force only because Gompers is a predominantly black school. Stevens’ claim led to loud applause.

Stevens refused to back off, even after Guaderrama said he resented the charge and was not lying.

Stevens and several other speakers also lashed out at school Principal Marie Thornton and her supervisors for not keeping the police from exerting their presence at the demonstration and putting at risk the 200 children who walked out in support of teacher Rhoenna Armster.

Student Elicia Hill read a statement dripping with sarcasm regarding Thornton, who has been criticized by several community activists for not making an appearance among students during the demonstration, even though she had been told to stay inside by a ranking district administrator because of possible injury to a shoulder mending from surgery.

“You have showed me that, by attending Gompers, the school that has won the highest awards in the nation year after year for its knowledge of the U.S. Constitution--a constitution that is supposed to guarantee freedom of speech--I will never have that right,” Hill said. She later added: “Thank you for making my physical well-being more important than your meeting. Thank you for allowing the police to show me that the freedoms you teach me here don’t exist.”

Later, Thornton was hooted when she spoke more than two hours after the meeting started, and tried to talk about academic programs and the need for parents and teachers to work together at Gompers. Several in the audience called for her to answer for her inaction during the demonstration.

They ignored her plea to focus instead on the ongoing work at Gompers following its conversion from a stellar magnet school--with a program where only a few neighborhood minority students join white students bused in for the high-powered curriculum--to one where all neighborhood students receive the same curriculum as those who attend under district integration plans.

Indeed, the issues of academics and of Armster, the teacher transferred to Lincoln High last week as a result of alleged poor evaluations by Thornton, hardly came up in the comments of speaker after speaker.

“I support the demonstration, not because the principal was wrong or the teacher was wrong, but for the right to demonstrate,” Stevens said.

“I don’t care about Armster or Thornton; the thing for me is the kids and the kids’ safety,” parent Jackie Samuel said.

District Supt. Tom Payzant promised action after he receives the results of an internal investigation into the actions of Thornton and other school administrators during the demonstration. But others discounted his promise, linking the problems at Gompers to larger issues of the lack of successful black academic achievement districtwide, and charging that school leaders must be confronted with more militant demands.