Schools Try Adapting to Changing Face of L.A.

At a pep rally at Jordan High School, the soccer team got enthusiastic cheers from students crowded into the school’s gymnasium. The team’s 24 members are all Latino and, according to coach Joseph Weither, soccer is gaining popularity. The boys’ soccer team was established only five years ago, just one of many signs of a major demographic change taking hold in the neighborhood.

The Watts community has been a symbol for black empowerment since the 1960s. The new reality, however, is that the community that surrounds Jordan High School is now black and Latino. The streets are now dabbed with small Latino markets; pushcart vendors weave through large numbers of Latino immigrants waiting for RTD buses.

Jordan’s enrollment, bolstered by students from adjacent South Gate, has gone from being more than 90% black in the early 1980s to 72% Latino today. And at “feeder” elementary schools in the area, the percentage of Latinos is even higher.

This quantitative change is also occurring in other neighborhoods once predominantly black and at high schools throughout South-Central Los Angeles. Manual Arts, Fremont and Jefferson high schools also have Latino majorities. The numbers of Latinos and blacks at Locke High are evenly split.

The demographic impact has forced change on the largely black administration of these schools. Locke Principal Edward Robbs said one big adjustment concerns language.

“Everything has to be in two languages. Many of us are struggling to either revive our old high school Spanish or take some new courses to try and become bilingual. I think that’s important,” said Robbs, who listens to instructional language tapes to and from work.

The greater number of Latinos in South-Central schools has also brought an urgent need for more bilingual teachers. But the Los Angeles Unified School District can’t keep up with the need for bilingual teachers.

“We have high schools right now that are in desperate need of additional bilingual staff,” said Dan Isaacs, the district’s assistant superintendent for the senior high school division. It is estimated that the district has only one certified bilingual instructor for every 400 non-English speaking students.

Curriculum changes are also occurring as the district, the nation’s second largest, absorbs students from throughout the world.

Because of the efforts of school board member Warren Furutani, the first ethnic studies course kicks off in February as a 10-week elective course. Furutani would like to see the class evolve into a graduation requirement.

“I think it reflects a reality,” said Furutani, whose district includes a section of South-Central Los Angeles. “People need to know their history, their culture. . . . I don’t mean that Latino students will go and learn about Latino culture. They will learn about that, but they need to know about African-American culture and vice versa, along with Asian Pacific American, Native American and Anglo . . .

“It is so integral in the issues of self-esteem and understanding who you are, and more importantly, who the other people are. . .”

At Jordan and other high schools, the population shift at times has meant social conflict, a friction that can reflect what is being felt in the surrounding community.

Said Jordan High School Principal Grace Strauther: “Adults (are) talking about vying for jobs, housing . . . all of that put together with symbolic things that in their (students’) minds they perceive to be unequal treatment. In this community there are so few resources for them to even fight about that you can see it becomes even more critical . . . There are not a great deal of jobs and opportunities in this Watts community.”

On Cinco de Mayo in 1989, fights broke out between Latino and black students at Jordan.

“Some of the posters for the Cinco de Mayo festivities said ‘Viva La Raza’. Some of the African-American students didn’t really understand that phrase and interpreted that to mean an attempt to take over and assume all the power at the school,” Strauther said.

Similarly, the principal said, there was a feeling among Latino students that more activities were held for Black History Month than Cinco de Mayo.

Strauther took the Cinco de Mayo incident and turned it around toward a positive solution, according to the school’s student leaders. “She had students from both sides meet to resolve their differences. There were 20 Hispanics and 20 blacks and every one spoke freely. It was something that had to be done,” said Oscar Sierra, student body vice president.

Added Keisha Daniels, another student leader: “The incident wasn’t good, but it let the students know how important it is that we need to get along. It gave us a chance to let the issue stand out so that we could explain it.”

“At student dances now we play Hispanic music and rap and other black music,” said Quentin Hall, Jordan student body president, who is black. He points to his election at a school that is predominantly Latino as proof that students see more than just race.

Strauther maintains there have been relatively few racial incidents on her campus. She admitted there have been fights but she said each incident has to be investigated to determine if it was racially motivated, gang related or some other cause.

Alicia Mejia, a campus aide who helps with security, said that in recent months she has seen a rise in incidents at Jordan that she considers to have racial overtones. “We seemed to do better several months ago than now,” Mejia said.

Despite this, Mejia remains supportive of the school. “My son was given the opportunity to transfer but we both like this school. I think Jordan has wonderful teachers and I think Mrs. Strauther cares about the students, but I’d like to see all these incidents stopped.”

Serious racial incidents have been reported outside of the Los Angeles district. At Cajon High School in San Bernardino County, 300 students rioted and 20 were arrested last October. Implicit in the concern of Los Angeles officials is the recognition that effective corrective action must be taken if the possibility for greater violence is to be avoided.

At Fremont, Principal John P. Haydel Jr. said a human relations committee has helped ease the transition from black to Latino student majority, “because there were conflicts based on the changing of the guard, so to speak.”

School board member Leticia Quezada believes administrators need to take bold steps to reach beyond the school grounds. “They really need to take risks in developing some human relations training for the parents in that community,” she said, “so there can be some better understanding, some cross cultural understanding, between the Central-American families that are coming into the neighborhood and the African-American families that have been there a long time.”

Both on the individual school and district levels, educators are struggling to adjust to a new demographic landscape. One key aspect to that adjustment is not to let old perceptions cloud the new realities. “My concern is that people understand who the public is we are now educating,” Furutani said. “It’s a different public and I think that’s the challenge of all the institutions that service people in our community.”

Andres Chavez, a Los Angeles writer, contributed to this article.