School Mistakenly Ousts Students at Graduation : Education: Five seniors are told to sit elsewhere or leave because they are ineligible for diplomas.

For five seniors at John H. Glenn High School in Norwalk, a graduation ceremony mishap turned one of the biggest nights of their lives into a nightmare.

Decked out in graduation caps and gowns, with their cousins, grandmothers and uncles watching, the students had marched into the football stadium for their graduation ceremony.

Then a school official tapped each student on the shoulder, told them they weren’t eligible to graduate and unceremoniously ordered them out of their seats, embarrassing them and their families.

As it turned out, two of the students, Enrique Alvarado and Mario Martinez, were entitled to diplomas. And the other three thought they were entitled to diplomas until the ceremony. The three could have completed the missing graduation requirements in time with advance notice.

“It was a fiasco of the first order,” said Elias Galvan, director of secondary education for the Norwalk-La Mirada Unified School District. “The parents have been upset ever since and rightfully so. The school made a mistake and they have to own up to it.”

Embarrassed officials awarded diplomas to three of the students at Monday’s school board meeting, and promised diplomas to the other two as soon as they complete unfinished work. But relatives are still unhappy over the ruined graduations of Alvarado, Martinez, Andrew Mata, Frank Rodarte and Gilberto Arzate.

Alvarado and Martinez had completed graduation requirements, but were not given credit for all their work. Arzate lacked only a passing score on a math proficiency test, which he took and passed the next day. Rodarte needs only to complete several assignments for a school safety class. He said he was never told that the missing assignments would prevent him from graduating. Mata’s makeup work will require about a month of summer school. His parents said they are upset because they were not told their son would not graduate, district officials said.

The confusion spoiled five family celebrations. Relatives of one student had come from as far as El Paso. The mother of another borrowed money to buy flowers and balloons to decorate the room of the family’s first high school graduate.

Rodarte had 25 relatives in attendance graduation night. “Taking me out of graduation and my mom and everybody there. . . . That’s what made me mad,” Rodarte said. “If I’d known, I would have told them not to go to graduation.”

He said his mother had called a guidance counselor the week before the June 16 ceremony and had been assured that he was set to graduate. “We even went to graduation practice in the morning and they didn’t tell me.”

The students had participated in all pre-graduation events, including a senior breakfast the day before and a coat-and-tie parents reception the previous week. They had already paid $17 for caps and gowns and bought $30 tickets for grad night at Disneyland.

The real celebration, however, would be the graduation. Though officials said all five had failed some courses, the students wanted badly to get their degrees.

While other classmates were suffering from senior slump, Rodarte and Arzate took a full schedule of classes, then went to night school three hours a day.

Alvarado said he tried to change his life by getting an 18-hour-a-week job as a supermarket box boy and avoiding the gang members who congregate at the end of his block.

Alvarado and Arzate are the first high school graduates in their families.

“These kids are typical kids,” said the district’s Galvan. “Not the kids with the 4.0 or 3.5 grade average, but they’re good kids. We’re trying to help these kids. Keep them in school, get them into junior college.”

To prepare for graduation, Arzate and Alvarado got haircuts and planned family celebrations. Alvarado’s mother had borrowed money from friends to buy flowers and balloons.

The five students first learned that something was amiss when they gathered, in caps and gowns, for the procession. An official told them that they could not sit with the graduates and receive diplomas, but that they would be allowed to march on the field, sit in the row behind the graduates and watch.

Thinking there had been a mistake, the students did not do as they were told. Instead they sat with their classmates. They rose for the Pledge of Allegiance and listened to the opening speakers as their families watched.

Then, during a song, first one school official and then Vice Principal Leon Estes quietly but openly confronted the students and asked them to move. They were told to sit apart from the other graduates or leave.

Estes said he thought that the students had known they would not graduate and that they were just being defiant.

One student became angry, ripped off his cap and gown, kicked some chairs and stormed off. His four friends followed as more than 3,000 watched.

“He gave them an ultimatum,” said a school official who asked not to be named. “He embarrassed them. I don’t blame them for leaving. This would never have happened if there had been communication.”

While Alvarado waited in the parking lot for his mother, he listened as the families of 260 other graduates screamed and cheered with the announcement of every name.

Estes, who is retiring after this school year, called the snafu an unfortunate oversight that has overshadowed the school’s efforts to graduate as many students as possible.

“One girl came in at 4:30 p.m. the day of graduation and took a proficiency test,” Estes said. “I told the counselor that if she passes this test to send me a note. That is what happened--at 5:30. And we put her in the graduation.”

Estes said 26 students graduated as a result of course work completed a day or two before commencement. That’s why administrators waited to make a final list of graduates until the afternoon of commencement day--a time frame which left little leeway to check for last-minute mistakes.

State officials said administrators from several other districts said local school systems establish policies on how to handle borderline graduates. They all emphasized the importance of keeping the students and their parents informed.

Arzate said the explanations and apologies do not make up for what he missed.

“It would have been better the other way, graduating with all the rest of the class.”

Times community correspondent Phil Garcia contributed to this story.