Oxnard Parents Voice Feelings on Brawl : Schools: Many at a grievance session insist that last week’s campus fight was not an isolated incident. Educators vow that security will improve.

Oxnard High School students are either armed or intimidated, adult troublemakers can enter and leave the campus at will, and administrators remain largely unaware of the violence that plagues the facility, according to some of the more than 100 parents who attended a grievance session at the school Tuesday night.

The meeting in the school library--attended by Oxnard Unified School District Supt. Ian Kirkpatrick, school board members Steve Stocks and Bedford Pinkert and Oxnard Principal Ruperto Cisneros--was prompted by last Wednesday’s brawl in the school gymnasium. Angry parents insisted that the fight was not an isolated incident.

“Kids have told me they’ve seen guns, knives, dynamite, drugs in the lockers,” Garni Tarazon said. “That gets you a little nervous.”

One mother said her son was chased from the campus by a man with a gun. Another said her daughter refused to report such incidents because teachers and administrators were as afraid as students and would not take action.

“Out of a lack of confidence in the administration, many parents have kept their children home from school,” said Jim Middleton, one of the parents who called the meeting.

Middleton and others contended that last week’s clash and other incidents are gang-related--a suggestion the administration has avoided.

Parents called on the administration to expel and publicly identify the students who are responsible for violence, improve security and keep non-students off campus. The group demanded a response at a meeting scheduled for Monday, and Cisneros promised to attend the session and provide some answers.

Kirkpatrick assured the crowd that security will improve, citing a plan to double the school’s two-person security staff and give the guards uniform jackets to make them easily identifiable. He promised expulsions when warranted, but stopped short of saying they would increase.

“We’re a lot smarter today than we were last week,” Kirkpatrick said.

Administrators said that under the law, they cannot publicly identify minors who are involved in disciplinary actions.

After the meeting, some parents grumbled that district officials had skirted the issues, but many said they were encouraged by the attendance and outrage they saw.

“If we had had a few more days, we could have filled the gym,” Middleton said.

The day after last week’s brawl, the Police Department increased its patrols near the school, but Sgt. Ken Nishihara said Tuesday that police are stretched too thin to do much more.

After the fight began in the school gymnasium, where students were eating lunch to escape a rainstorm, police were called. One 16-year-old was arrested and charged with inciting a riot, and 15 other students were suspended from school.

The official version of the brawl differs dramatically from that given by teen-agers who witnessed it.

Administrators said that only about 15 people were involved in the fracas, which they said was limited to the gymnasium and had ended by the time police arrived. Students said that as many as 50 youths took part in the fight, some wielding pipes and sticks, and that the violence spread to other parts of the campus.

School and police officials also played down the possibility of gang involvement.