Remarks on Academic Team Defended : Schools: A board member dismisses critics of her statement that the all-Asian group does not reflect enrollment at San Gabriel High.

Saying, “You just don’t get it,” an Alhambra schools official rebuffed a critic of her recent remarks that San Gabriel High School’s all-Asian Academic Decathlon Team does not represent enrollment and that team coaches discouraged non-Asians from participating.

At Tuesday night’s Board of Education meeting, the Chinese American Parents & Teachers Assn. of Southern California and others asked board Vice President Dora Padilla to explain comments she had made at a previous meeting about the team’s racial makeup.

Instead, in response to Marina Tse, president of the 1,000-member parents’ group, Padilla twice commented sharply: “You just don’t get it, do you?”

The snub prompted Alhambra Teachers Assn. President Virginia Clark to tell the board: “I do think that was unconscionably rude.”

The school board took in all this without comment.

After Tuesday’s meeting Tse said her group wanted to present its side to the board and has not discussed other possible steps, such as demanding an apology from Padilla.

Padilla made the remarks about the decathlon team’s ethnicity at a Dec. 15 school board meeting in which members were recognized for their accomplishments. Some students left the meeting in tears, Tse said.

The emphasis on ethnicity with regard to the decathlon team is divisive, Tse said.

“I never complain that the sports team or the arts team doesn’t have enough Asians,” she said.

Co-decathlon head coach Julie Rivera called Padilla’s remarks “a great insult” to students.

“They were supposed to be honored, and they were slapped in the face,” she said before Tuesday night’s meeting.

Padilla responded that she had lauded the nine-member team at the meeting, where students were recognized for their third-place regional trophy and ninth-place Los Angeles County finish. But Padilla said she also had wanted to emphasize that the team should reflect the 3,200-student high school’s diversity.

The student body is about 44% Asian, 43% Latino, 9% Anglo and 4% other.

Also, in remarks to reporters, Padilla said some parents complained that decathlon coaches did not encourage, or recruit, non-Asian students.

Padilla, whose term expires in November, 1994, declined to elaborate or to identify the complaining parents.

The 14-year board member only would say that “a lack of access was afforded by other students who also sought to be members of the team” and that “there was a feeling among some students that their efforts to seek coaching and attention wasn’t there for them.”

“If someone is trying to say I’m zeroing in against Asians, that’s madness,” Padilla said before Tuesday’s meeting.

Rivera defended the team’s selection process, saying any student is welcome to try out. Potential team members, who must take a six-week summer school class, are recruited through teachers, counselors and notices in the school newsletter.

Of 75 students who completed the summer class, only 30 said they wanted to be considered for the team--two Latinos and 28 Asians, Rivera said. Selection is based on test scores, and Asian students had the top scores in exams on six subjects.

The present team is the first all-Asian one in six years, Rivera pointed out, adding that the seven-member coaching staff included two Latinos, three Anglos and two Asians.

Team member Carolyn Cao said she was shaken by Padilla’s remarks.

“I was very disturbed,” the 16-year-old junior said. “For one, she doesn’t know how we were picked, or anything like that. To just say, ‘I don’t think this is right that this is all Asians,’ it was very upsetting.”

Other diversity issues have surfaced at San Gabriel High School in the past two years. In 1991, two Chinese brothers were beaten by a group of Latino students, and four Vietnamese students were attacked by two Anglos on campus. No serious injuries resulted from either incident.

In both cases, racial epithets were exchanged, but school officials downplayed the racial nature of the fights.