Parents Protest Attack on Black Youth : Races: Relatives remove some Ventura High School students from class early because the teen-agers were afraid to leave unescorted.

Parents of black students at Ventura High School protested on Friday an attack against the president of the Black Student Union and accused school officials of not doing enough to protect their children.

About half a dozen relatives of black students met with school officials and then pulled their children out of school an hour early because the teen-agers were afraid to leave school unescorted.

The protest followed an incident Thursday in which Zaylorde Stout, 17, was punched by a man he identified as a former Ventura High School student who belongs to a gang of white supremacist skinheads.

He was treated in the school infirmary and sent home, Ventura High School Principal Jerry Barshay said.

Zaylorde said he was leaving school at the end of the day when a car pulled up next to him and someone yelled a racial slur. A man got out of the car and punched him in the mouth, he said.

A spokesman for the Ventura Police Department said Friday that the attack is being investigated.

School official Jill Rowe said Zaylorde “is very well liked.” Last summer, she said, he was the only junior chosen to represent the school at a leadership workshop in Sacramento.

Zaylorde returned to school Friday with a deep bruise on his lip. He said skinheads at school had called him a racist for heading the Black Student Union.

“They’ve never even attended one of our meetings,” he said. “They don’t know what we’re about.”

About 30 of the school’s 1,820 students are of African-American descent, school officials said.

Barshay, who said he was not aware of any white supremacists or skinheads on campus, met with parents to reassure them that the school was taking steps to prevent further violence.

Throughout the day, Barshay said, school psychologists counseled concerned students, while teachers and administrators patrolled campus. Ventura police officers circled the campus for added security.

But the parents, who were not satisfied, walked out of the school with about 20 black students an hour before the final school bell rang.

“I don’t think it’s right that I have to leave work to come here because my kids are scared to ride the city bus home,” said Geneva Pleasant, a mother of three students.

Kim Brown, whose niece attends Ventura High, said she plans to complain to the school board.

“If they can’t protect our kids, they should find somebody else to run the school,” said Esther Brown, another parent.

The students also were upset. Some of them said their teachers advised them not to leave campus during lunch because the school could not protect them at the doughnut shop across the street.

“We have to stay in school all day,” said Sabrina Pleasant, 17. “It’s like prison. We have no privileges.”

Several students said harassment by both student and non-student skinheads has been going on for months.

“They call us nigger and blackie and draw swastikas on our desk,” said student Chandra Crudup.

By the end of the school day Friday, about a dozen teachers and administrators, many of them carrying walkie-talkies, took up positions in and around campus. A patrol car stood guard outside the main entrance as students filed out of their classes.

But by then, most of the school’s black students had already gone home.