Uneasy Calm Settles on Campus Day After Brawl, Four Arrests : Schools: Witnesses say racial epithets were exchanged before fight between two girls that sparked wider violence at Leuzinger High. Officials suspend 25 students.

Leuzinger High School settled into an uneasy quiet Friday, a day after classes were cut short after a brawl between dozens of black and Latino students. But signs of tension on the Lawndale campus abounded.

To prevent a repeat of Thursday’s violence--the second major campus disturbance in a year--school officials suspended 25 students for a week, including the two girls whose early morning fight was blamed for starting the afternoon brawl. Six sheriff’s deputies were assigned to patrol the campus, where only half of the school’s 2,900 students showed up for classes.

A group of students attempted to soothe tensions Friday, calling for racial harmony during the morning recess. But the effort was marred when youths in a passing car shouted racial epithets at a group of black students outside the school.

Several students who said they feared for their safety left campus early, and some parents vowed to transfer their children out of the racially mixed district.

“I feel uncomfortable,” said Irma Perez, an 11th-grader after deciding to leave campus at 10:30 a.m. “There’s nobody there and I’m afraid something will start.”

Thursday’s unrest was sparked by a fight between a black girl and a Latina classmate who had exchanged racial epithets, according to police and several students who witnessed the incident. Scattered fights broke out during the lunch recess, prompting school officials to call in sheriff’s deputies and police to establish order.

Police estimate that 500 to 800 students streamed out of class to witness the confrontation, but school officials say only about 25 were actually fighting.

Four youths were arrested for threatening bystanders with a billy club and later released, according to sheriff’s deputies and police.

School administrators said they had launched an investigation of the incident.

Meanwhile, school officials and students on Friday offered varying explanations for the violence. Many attribute it to rivalry between black and Latino gangs.

“It’s Mexicans against blacks and blacks against Mexicans,” said one ninth-grade girl, who declined to be quoted by name.

Pam Sturgeon, president of the district’s governing board, called for the formation of a task force to study gang violence in the district’s two high schools and one continuation school.

Others, however, downplayed suggestions that the violence was racially motivated.

“Kids fight, regardless of color or ethnic group,” said Supt. Tom Barkelew. He said the disturbance may have been deliberately planned by someone who was “trying to create a show.”

“The strange thing is that all of a sudden at noon time, all the media came,” Barkelew said. “I was told by one media person that there was a phone call and there was going to be a riot, so someone was doing some planning. It’s very suspicious.”

Thursday’s campus disturbance marks the second time in a little over a year that classes have been disrupted in the racially mixed Centinela Valley Union High School District, which covers Lawndale, Hawthorne and Lennox.

Last year, 2,500 students from Leuzinger and Hawthorne high schools boycotted classes during two days of demonstrations. Students at the time said they were protesting the reassignment of Kenneth Crowe, a popular black principal who had accused the predominantly Latino school board of failing to support his efforts to eradicate discrimination against blacks.

An investigator hired by the district concluded last summer that the walkout was organized by black employees who wanted to discredit the mostly Latino school board. But the state Department of Fair Employment and Housing accused the district this month of discriminating against Crowe and another black employee, both of whom have left the district.

The number of minority students has increased in the last 10 years. In 1980, 45.6% of the student body was Anglo, 33.7% Latino and 12.1% black. By the fall of 1990, the student population was 11% Anglo, 56% Latino, 18% black, and 9% Asian.