Effort Started to Ease Tensions Between Banning and Dorsey

While Banning High School presses its appeal of restrictions placed on the Wilmington school’s football team for refusing to play Dorsey High School on its home turf, the Los Angeles Unified School District has launched a series of meetings aimed at easing tensions between the schools.

Banning officials have decided to challenge the probation and other restrictions placed on the football team by a district athletic committee, even though the terms of the probation were narrowed this week.

The probation was ordered after Banning forfeited a Nov. 1 football game to Dorsey High School rather than play at Dorsey’s home field, Jackie Robinson Stadium in southwest Los Angeles. Parents of Banning players said it would be too dangerous to hold the game there given that angry Dorsey fans stormed Banning’s home field after losing last year’s matchup.

In addition, there were two apparently gang-related shootings in the Dorsey area in the weeks preceding this year’s game date.

The forfeiture heightened bad feelings between the two high schools. Dorsey officials and students felt slighted by Banning’s decision, and Banning supporters were stung by criticism that they were elitist. So district officials decided to organize a series of meetings they hope will improve the situation.

“The purpose of the meetings is to begin the healing process and the establishment of positive relationships and understanding between the two schools,” said Jo Jimenez, an administrator in the district’s senior high school division.

Jimenez and Richard Browning, another administrator, are conducting the meetings.

On Monday, six parents and community representatives from each school will meet at Dorsey in southwest Los Angeles to talk about their concerns. Two meetings have already been held between the principals and assistant principals from the two schools, and future meetings are being planned between student representatives and members of the football and basketball teams.

“So much of what we have learned (so far),” Jimenez said, “is that a lot of the animosity has really been generated by perceptions which may or not have been accurate.”

The first two meetings between the school administrators, Jimenez said, did much to clear the air. Now, she said, the effort will focus on reaching deeper into each school’s community.

Also, if the two football teams end up facing one another in this year’s playoffs, district officials want to hold a luncheon meeting with about 20 members of each team before they meet on the playing field.

Banning football Coach Joe Dominguez, who decided to forfeit the game after parents would not allow their youngsters to play at Dorsey, said Wednesday that the meetings might be useful.

“Maybe it might solve some of the animosity between the two communities,” Dominguez said. “I don’t know if that exists but it seems like it does.”

However, Dominguez also predicted that next year the problem might be even worse if the school district and its athletic committee continue to insist that Banning must play at Dorsey’s home field rather than at Banning’s as scheduled.

“This community is not going to forget,” Dominguez said. “From what I hear, the people are getting madder and madder.”

Last week, the district committee that governs athletics placed Banning on probation through the 1992 season for forfeiting the game. On Tuesday, a three-member appeals panel narrowed the probation to only the 1992 season, but the board said Banning must still play at Dorsey’s home field next year or be barred from the playoffs.

School officials, parents and community leaders say they will take their appeal all the way to the school board if all sanctions against Banning are not lifted.

“I think the people in this community think they’re getting something forced down their throats,” Dominguez said.