Reseda Campus Was Widely Regarded as One of the City’s Safest

Dimitri Vadetsky waved a meaty, muscular hand toward the tree-shaded campus at Reseda High School and spoke sternly--a tone befitting his job as assistant principal:

“I defy you to find . . . one hair out of place. We’re so proud of this school. That’s why this shooting doesn’t make sense. It just doesn’t.”

The 59-year-old Vadetsky is a symbol of this San Fernando Valley high school. He’s proud to a fault. And he’s angry and confused, unable to grasp the violence that erupted on school grounds on a gray Monday morning.

After a blast of gunfire, a 17-year-old boy was dead from a wound allegedly inflicted by a fellow student beneath a pair of signs warning against carrying weapons on campus.

Hours after the shooting, students still filed by the blood-spattered sidewalk where Michael Shean Ensley of South Los Angeles collapsed. Some looked away. Others wiped away tears.

But far from being out of control, Reseda High is a model school--so highly regarded for good student discipline and fewer gang problems, administrators insist, that parents from across the Valley, and even police officers, have transferred their children there.

“Reseda High School was a bright success story in this city--that is, until today,” said Barbara Garry, the school’s assistant principal in charge of discipline until transferring last year to San Fernando High School.

The violence, she added, had little to do with Reseda High. “It has more to do with the society at large,” she said. “Why can a teen-ager get a handgun faster and more cheaply than he can a pair of tennis shoes? . . . If this shooting can happen in a school like Reseda High--one that really has it together--then it can happen anywhere .”

Like many Valley schools, 37-year-old Reseda High is a product of the busing that was begun here about 20 years ago.

Today, more than 55% of the school’s 2,000 students are Latino; 22% are Anglo; 15% black and 8% Asian, officials say. About 37%--or 750--of those students are bused there each day from South Los Angeles either because they want a more integrated campus or their neighborhood schools are too crowded.

And while both the victim and shooting suspect are products of that busing program, others say students have coexisted peacefully on campus--whether they walked to school, were bused or were dropped off by their parents.

Officials insist that busing has been good for the school.

“It’s had a positive effect on Reseda High,” Garry said. “Without it, the school would have closed a long time ago--there just weren’t enough local students. In the meantime, our bused-in kids have become student leaders, top athletes and grade-getters.”

And now one of them is dead.

“I’m crushed,” said Assistant Principal Vadetsky, speaking in the school’s well-polished hallway. “Schools can only offer so much sanctuary from the violence that came calling today.”

For Vadetsky, Monday had begun ominously. Arriving at school at 6:15 a.m., he noticed the school had been a weekend target of graffiti taggers, who painted the cryptic phrases “Trash” and “TDK” on outdoor concrete columns.

Hours later, a gunshot rang from the school’s science, business and math classroom building. As the bleak morning passed, it became Vadetsky’s job to wander the campus--rallying students, carrying on the discipline needed for the day.

He walked the campus swiftly, passing the numerous school spirit banners, talking of the artworks that hung in the hallways that have always remained free of vandalism and graffiti--as have the student restrooms and desks.

Hustling past students gathered to discuss the death, he consoled a young girl who lamented: “Why did he have to die? Why did he have to die? Oh Michael, he never hurt anybody!”

Moments later, Vadetsky stood amid another group of students, and in a soothing voice warned them not to sneak off campus. He vowed increased police security and promised them that school--and not the streets--was the safest place to be.

For Vadetsky, this was indeed a strange, almost nightmarish Monday. In his 12 years at Reseda High, there had never been an on-campus killing, he said.

True, several non-students had become victims of violence in the adjacent park and had come onto school grounds for help. And recently, officials had begun using a metal detector at weekend sporting events.

But never before had the school been a scene of death.

Vadetsky himself had been involved in the school’s most recent violence when two men robbed him of his wallet and Rolex watch as he sat in his office last August.

The two men used a ruse to get on school grounds--one playing a new student and the other his counselor, Vadetsky recalled. “I was telling the younger man about our rules against gang colors when I looked and saw a .357 pointing at my face. The older guy said ‘Don’t try anything stupid or I’ll blow your brains out.’ ”

A 17-year-old Van Nuys youth was arrested and convicted in connection with the robbery. The older man is still at large.

Despite such incidents, Vadetsky is proud of his students, particularly of the way several sought help for the dying teen-ager. Outside his office hang articles about successful Reseda High sports teams.

And if that sweltering day last fall is any guide, Vadetsky knows there’s hope for his school.

That’s when he gathered 100 black and Latino students to quell raw feelings that had brewed like the late-summer storm clouds. Days earlier, a Latino student had spit a mouthful of water at a friend, hitting a nearby black youth.

Several days of tension brought the eleventh-hour summit.

“Man, was that meeting ever hostile,” he recalled. “At one point, I thought I was going to lose control. But after an hour, before going back to class, some of those kids from opposite sides walked over and hugged each other. It was my best moment in 35 years as an educator, one of the proudest days of my life.”

Then he sighed and looked off toward the bloodstained sidewalk:

“And this has got to be my worst.”