Students With Guns May Face Expulsion : Violence: Parents, students and teachers from Eagle Rock High School press school board members to take action.

Spurred in part by Eagle Rock High School students and parents, Los Angeles school board member Julie Korenstein has introduced a measure to automatically expel students who carry guns to school or seriously injure others, a milder version of a proposal that the board has rejected.

Nine Eagle Rock High School parents and students, led by history teacher Rudy Cordero and parent Cathy Ellingford, attended Monday’s board meeting, spoke in favor of the measure and presented the board with a petition.

Korenstein said recent protests by Eagle Rock parents and students over campus violence helped prompt her to introduce the motion, which proposes automatic expulsion for any student who carries a gun or seriously injures anyone at school, whether or not the student uses a weapon.

The motion was referred to a committee for public discussion and most likely will return to the board June 25 for a vote.

Although the board’s action was preliminary, Cordero and parents who attended the meeting regarded it as a sign of success.

“We got response in the community and we’re getting open debate among board members,” said Cordero, who presented petitions with 780 signatures from Eagle Rock residents, demanding action against school violence.

“What the kids want is that adults are dealing with the problem,” Cordero said. “It may take awhile, but we’re going to get something.”

The guidelines in Korenstein’s expulsion motion were actually recommended by a task force appointed last year by the board to explore solutions to campus violence. A broader motion to automatically expel any student caught with a weapon at school, introduced May 7 by Roberta Weintraub, was defeated 6 to 1 by the board.

Korenstein and other board members have said they voted against Weintraub’s motion, which would have ousted all students caught with any type of weapon, because it was too broad. Korenstein’s motion, following the task force’s recommendation, would automatically expel students caught with guns, whether or not they used them, and students who seriously injured others, whether or not they used guns or other weapons.

The visit to the meeting was the latest action by Cordero and the parents to protest the board’s May 7 decision and increasing violence at Eagle Rock High, which has an enrollment of about 2,500 students in seventh through 12th grade.

On May 25, two days after a 14-year-old girl was stabbed at the school, more than 150 students walked out of classes for about an hour in protest. The stabbing was the 11th incident since October involving violence or weapons at the campus, Principal John Anderson said. In five of the incidents, students caught with guns were arrested.

Less than a week after the walkout, more than 250 parents, other residents and students attended a meeting organized by representatives of board member Leticia Quezada, whose district includes Eagle Rock, and complained about the lack of action by school administrators and the board.

“Our concern very simply is that we don’t like the violence and we want it stopped,” Cynthia Place Reiners, parent of two Eagle Rock students, said at the meeting. “As a community, we’re living on borrowed time. It’s only sheer luck that we haven’t had a murder yet.”

On Friday, hundreds of students wore black wristbands to protest violence and gang activities at the school.

And Tuesday, parents urged members of the Eagle Rock High School leadership council--a committee of administrators, teachers and parents--to consider funding a hot line for students to anonymously report incidents, installing a metal detector or increasing security at the school.

“There has never been a concrete effort like this,” Ellingford said. But now “people are listening, and there is dialogue. That’s improvement.”

Cordero and the parents have also suggested a poster contest for students to protest violence and gang activity.

Another community meeting will be held later this month at Eagle Rock High, said Ernie Delgado, a spokesman for Quezada. He said Quezada, who was out of town for last week’s community meeting, will attend.