Problems Still Plague Gompers, Study Says : Education: A highly-touted program to solve problems at the racially troubled school has failed to work, according to a report.

Two years after a much-ballyhooed renewal plan was begun for troubled Gompers Secondary School, the Southeast San Diego school still has severe student discipline problems, teacher turnover double the district average, a collapsing integration program and haphazard curriculum improvements, a school district-appointed committee of Gompers parents, teachers and community leaders has concluded.

The report from the longstanding committee, headed by retired Superior Court Judge Franklin B. Orfield, details the continuing turmoil over academic, leadership and integration issues at the award-winning math-science-computer magnet facility.

Despite thousands of hours of staff meetings, community forums and Board of Education debates, there remain fundamental disagreements over how to maintain the high-powered curriculum--intended to attract white students to the heavily non-white area--and at the same time extend its benefits to the non-white neighborhood students long shut out of the special magnet offerings.

But nowhere in the report are the leadership skills of principal Marie Thornton addressed directly, although Thornton has been a lightening rod both for praise and criticism during the past three years.

Supporters say she has been singled out for attack because she is black and supportive of neighborhood students. Critics say she lacks minimum skills to deal with teachers and parents, and they lay the turmoil at her door.

The report, to be presented to board trustees today, said the renewal plan’s “effectiveness to achieve an integrated, high performance technical magnet has not yet been demonstrated.”

Among the major findings of several subcommittees over the past year:

* There is a critical need for improved student discipline. Now, students are defiant and do not respond to teacher pleas, and they fight, use profanity, and many are tardy and truant, especially at the junior-high level.

* Communication is poor between students and teachers, students and counselors, teachers and counselors, and among parents, students and the principal’s office. The school needs a weekend retreat where issues can be aired.

* Achievement is still low for many students, many having less than a C average, along with unsatisfactory citizenship marks. Test scores are at or below district averages at the seventh- and eighth-grade levels--with a majority of non-white students--while much higher at the high-school level, in part a legacy of the fact that, until last year, grades nine-through-12 were small, all-magnet classes of equal numbers of white- and non-white students.

* Teacher turnover averaged 47% the past two years, more than double the district average, with eight of 14 gone from the mathematics department, a key element in preparing neighborhood students for the rigors of the magnet. Seven chairmen of academic departments have left in the past two years.

Although some community activists applaud the departure of those high-school teachers unwilling to bend to the dictates of the renewal plan--and in particular the demand that they teach at the junior-high level--the report said that, “if the plan is to be successfully implemented, this turnover rate must be lowered to create the stability needed for significant planning, increased morale and improved communications.”

The renewal plan was designed to expand the science-math magnet at the junior high level to include all neighborhood seventh- and eighth-graders, almost all of whom are black and Latino, by having magnet instructors at the high school level teach unior high as well.

Traditionally, Gompers magnet programs were restricted to an equal number of minority students matched on an equal basis with the white students who were bused to the school voluntarily, attracted by the curriculum.

The rest of the junior high students had a different academic program that many parents and black community activists perceived as inferior. The high-school portion of Gompers had been a limited, all-magnet component of the school, and only about 40% of eighth-grade neighborhood students could remain at the school for their high school years.

But, although neighborhood students can now stay at the school as long as they want, the report says that Gompers has “no clearly stated plan to bring under-skilled middle grades up to the standards of the high school magnet program.”

As a result of the continued disagreements, non-resident white student enrollment has dropped 53% and the school is now 18.9% white, contrasted with 33% during the 1985-86 school year.

“The decrease in (white) students over the past two years occurred for every grade but the 10th grade,” the report said. “There are now consistently 50 or fewer (white) students in every grade,” making the district’s integration goal--the reason why the magnet was established--impossible to carry out.

In addition, a waiting list of more than 1,300 students in 1985-86 has dwindled to about 100. “Recruitment of non-resident students must become a priority for this school,” the report said, adding that a turnaround is not simple because “diverse factors are involved, including discipline, racial disharmony, miscommunications and staff turnover.”

One bright spot highlighted by the committee is the continuing strength of the gifted and talented education program (GATE) at the school.

Teachers in the program have apparently been able to insulate the program--whose student composition is 50% white, 50% non-white--from the general turmoil, the report said. A disproportionate number of the school’s awards in past years have come from students in GATE classes.

The committee offered no quick fixes in its report. Members do say, however, that the school’s combined seventh-through-12th-grade structure may cause special difficulty for the principal and teachers because of distinct differences between junior high- and high-school-age students.

Among recommendations are:

* Some screening of students who want to attend Gompers, perhaps “something as simple as filling out an application.” Now, any neighborhood student can attend Gompers automatically. “Students and their parents should understand their responsibilities and their commitments for participating in the magnet. An application process helps communicate the goals of the program and helps the student in the decision of whether or not to participate.”

* Screen new teachers coming to Gompers and help them acclimate to the school better. There have been no teachers in the district voluntarily coming to Gompers, and those new to the school have been assigned. There continues to be poor relations between many teachers and the administration.

Although the report does not mention principal Thornton directly, schools Supt. Tom Payzant told Channel 10 commentator John Beatty last week that Thornton will remain at her post for the next school year. Payzant, who couldn’t be reached for comment Monday, said on the television program that the school can improve if the media spotlight on it is dimmed.