Students Sneaking Into a Better Education : Schools: With the aid of parents, teen-agers from troubled neighborhoods assume false addresses to attend classes in other districts.

Patricia looks like any Torrance teen-ager as she leaves school each afternoon, lugging her textbooks and talking with friends.

But then she heads for a nearby bus stop, where, unbeknown to her teachers and most of her classmates, she boards a city bus and leaves Torrance for her home in another South Bay city.

Patricia, not her real name, is one of an unknown number of students from other cities who have supplied false addresses so they can attend Torrance’s highly rated public school system.

Her parents installed a telephone line in the home of a Torrance friend so that the family would have a Torrance phone number. The line has become Patricia’s link to a Torrance education, which she and her parents believe is far superior to what is available at her troubled neighborhood high school.

“It was a real moral dilemma for us,” Patricia’s mother said. “It caused us to do a lot of lying. A lot of untruths. But we think that safety and education is worth it.”

It is a story echoed by families of other Los Angeles County students who furtively commute from more urban districts in search of what they perceive as a better education. Some of the parents also worry that violence and gang problems are increasing in their home districts--such as the Los Angeles Unified School District, the Compton Unified School District and the Centinela Valley Union High School District, which serves the cities of Hawthorne, Lawndale and Lennox.

Many districts do not keep records of exactly how many students have been discovered with fake addresses, but some school officials say they suspect the phenomenon of “line-jumping” is increasing.

So far this fall, at least 40 students have been ordered to leave Torrance schools because they were found to live outside the city.

Other districts say they, too, regularly uncover students with fake addresses. The Temple City Unified School District finds 25 or 30 students each year. Beverly Hills High School dropped a dozen students last year because of residency problems.

Inglewood Unified School District officials suspect that Los Angeles Unified students are faking addresses to attend their schools. “We are aware that there are a number of students who are using false addresses; we just can’t prove it because we don’t have the manpower,” said Maurice Wiley, assistant to the superintendent.

Although parents have been “line-jumping” for years--sometimes taking white children out of racially mixed schools--several officials said the practice is being used by families from varied racial and economic backgrounds.

“It’s not just ‘white flight.’ It’s people looking for places where they think their kids are safe. . . . It cuts across all ethnic lines,” said Phil Kauble, consultant in charge of attendance and administrative services at the county Office of Education.

“Safety seems to be the big consideration,” said Arthur Kraft, administrator of attendance service at the Long Beach Unified School District.

The practice is occurring nationwide, said August Steinhilber, general counsel at the National School Boards Assn. in Alexandria, Va., where school district inquiries on the issue have increased in the last two years.

The migration of those who use fake addresses is usually from poor or troubled urban districts to wealthier suburban ones, education officials said.

If the ruses are detected, school officials find themselves in the unfamiliar--and awkward--role of ordering students to leave their schools.

“If you don’t live in town, and you don’t have a legitimate permit, you shouldn’t be going to Torrance schools. It’s the law,” said Edward J. Richardson, schools superintendent in Torrance, which has stepped up efforts to weed out students with fake addresses.

Residency questions have begun creating a stir in Torrance, a largely white, middle-class suburb wedged between more urban cities to the north and east and the prosperous Palos Verdes Peninsula to the south.

The concerns are adding to the constant wariness of those families who have falsified residency data to get their children into Torrance schools.

“We walk on eggs,” Patricia’s mother said.

Patricia, other students and some parents agreed to interviews if their real names were not used.

All said they left their home districts because they have doubts about the quality of education there, or fear violence and gang problems. In Torrance, they say, they have found more up-to-date textbooks, better equipped science laboratories and an atmosphere more conducive to learning.

“(Teachers) don’t have to worry as much about discipline, so they have more of a chance to teach,” Patricia said.

Another student, Lisa, says she came to Torrance to escape her neighborhood school, Leuzinger High School in Lawndale.

Lisa’s mother says Torrance schools provide “a lot more homework--which can’t hurt--and a lot less time for them to be out on the streets.”

She said she feared that if Lisa went to Leuzinger, she would end up quitting school because of gang activity and violence there. And although she continues to look for a house or apartment in Torrance, she has been thwarted by rents as high as $1,000 a month.

Devising a fail-safe fake address is a challenge.

Torrance officials ask new students for proof of residency, such as telephone bills or car registration, that shows an address in the city. And this year, the district hired a retired principal, Darold Kusch, to work part time to check students’ addresses.

Kusch rings doorbells at the students’ purported addresses and talks to neighbors and landlords. Once he went to an address at 7 a.m. to see if the student was there; he wasn’t. And he has parked near the city’s eastern border at Western Avenue to see if students were crossing into the district.

Retired teachers are recruited to verify addresses in the Bellflower Unified School District, and in the Temple City schools, attendance director Jim Johnson pays visits to suspicious addresses as early as 4:30 a.m. or as late as 10:30 p.m.

Many school officials agree that if students maintain good grades and do not draw attention to themselves, they may avoid getting caught.

There are drawbacks to this covert lifestyle, students admit.

The bus rides are long and tedious. And the fear of discovery never entirely evaporates.

Leslie, a student in Torrance for more than two years, still worries that investigators will follow her home to prove she really lives in Hawthorne.

But she does not see what she is doing as being wrong or unethical. After all, she said, she is trying to get a better education.

“I think it’s OK to do that,” she said, “because it’s going to help you get ahead in the future.”