‘Home of Scholars and Champions’ : School: Proud and diverse, Poly High of Long Beach is counting on a tradition of resiliency to overcome its connection to a shocking murder.

From the outside, the large beige building on Atlantic Boulevard in Long Beach looks like a nondescript factory in a rough part of town, but a small sign on an outside wall gives a hint of what really goes on inside.

“Home of Scholars and Champions,” it says.

Long Beach residents talk about Polytechnic High School in the same venerating tones that some Easterners reserve for places like Harvard and Yale.

Poly, as the school is known, is the oldest high school in the city, an award winner in just about every competition it enters and a place that has turned out scores of local movers and shakers.

Poly has been named a state distinguished school twice. It offers more advanced placement classes than any other school in the country and has more than two dozen valedictorians in this year’s graduating class--all with perfect 4.0 grade averages. Poly has become a magnet school for high achievers all over the city and offers special programs in international commerce and vocational instruction.

But it does not limit itself to intellectual pursuits. It dominates its league in football, basketball and track, and has fraternities and sororities, dozens of clubs and the oldest Junior ROTC program west of the Mississippi.

Tennis great Billie Jean King went to Poly. So did athletes like Chicago Bears defensive back Mark Carrier and Leonard Russell, last season’s American Football Conference offensive rookie of the year with the New England Patriots.

Actor Van Heflin, soprano Marilyn Horne and bandleader Spike Jones also attended the school.

“If you live in Long Beach, this is the school,” said Kevin Wheaton, a 16-year-old junior. “We’re overcrowded here. Some people get turned away and they aren’t happy.”

When the news media gathered at the front gate of Poly on Friday, however, it was not to witness the academic award assembly in the school auditorium or to see the new courtyard display of brightly colored flags representing Poly’s 3,700 ethnically diverse students.

It was a sensational killing involving Poly students that drew the outside world to the sprawling 30-acre campus and that left proud students, instructors and Principal H.J. Green shaking their heads.

“This will give us a bad name,” said Ron Joseph, 17, a junior. “Not all negative things happen here. Just because we had one bad incident doesn’t mean we’re a bad school.”

Green, who spent the last day of classes fielding questions from reporters, said he is afraid of the damage the high-profile case will have on the school’s reputation. But he said at the same time that he knows Poly has a long reputation for resiliency.

Built in 1895, Poly was surrounded by barley fields in its early days. The jack rabbit was chosen as a mascot because so many of them flourished in the area.

A major earthquake in 1933 leveled the central Long Beach campus, forcing classes to convene on Burcham Field in tents. The reconstruction began immediately and soon the Poly of old was back.

The years brought significant changes to the neighborhood, putting students from all over the globe together on one campus.

The racial changes brought conflicts in the early 1970s, leading to the formation of a special campus group that is still active today.

The Polytechnic Community Interracial Committee decided to replace the traditional homecoming court that most schools have with international ambassadors that represent Latinos, African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Pacific Islanders and Anglos.

The same committee was active earlier this year when some white students proposed a Caucasian Ancestry Club to go along with the school’s many other cultural organizations. After much controversy, the committee voted to allow the club as long as it remains positive, keeps membership open and does not become a white supremacist organization.

Many say that Poly is handling the mix of cultures well. The campus is about 29% black, 26% Anglo, 17% Asian, 15% Latino and 9% Pacific Islander.

“You can’t be here and not socialize with people from other cultures,” said Rick Perrotta, 17, an Anglo student who has a black girlfriend. “I like this type of school. There are so many new people and new opportunities.”

And he insists that that is not just talk.

Perrotta moved from Long Beach to Buena Park last year and said one thing about the move was understood in his family--he would commute to Poly.

Poly now sits in the middle of a high-crime neighborhood that gangs have divided up block by block. But students say the school has been able to rise above many of the problems that surround it and generally avoids the gang violence that has plagued other inner-city schools.

“We’ve had some gangs and some fights but its not a big deal here,” Wheaton said. “Most of us are just thinking about other things.”