The Anatomy of a School’s Disaster : Education: Compton campus is beleaguered by vandalism, theft and allegations of racism. A new administration struggles to get it back on track and avert a state takeover.

Princess Denmon never braved the bathrooms at Whaley Middle School in Compton. The 13-year-old avoided the sometimes broken toilets and the always smelly, filthy and graffiti-covered stalls and sinks. Besides, sometimes the bathrooms were padlocked shut.

At lunchtime, she and about 950 other students took their food to a semi-enclosed outdoor patio, where the 14 tables were covered with dried mud, bird dung and graffiti. Everywhere she and her classmates looked, they saw signs of decay, theft, graffiti taggers and vandalism--from bent basketball rims to burned classrooms.

Such conditions were the manifestations of a school in crisis, a campus that became home to virtually every impediment to learning that can plague an urban campus--from vandalism, funding shortages and alleged mismanagement to struggling students, uninvolved parents, demoralized teachers and an unpopular, divisive administration. Some local activists have even charged the mostly African-American staff with discrimination against Latino students.

These issues--to varying degrees--confront administrators at many schools in the academically and financially struggling Compton Unified School District. But nowhere, it seems, have they converged as at Whaley.

To begin with, the percentage of students from families who are recent immigrants, who receive public assistance and speak limited English is among the highest in Los Angeles County. Students’ scores on standardized tests are among the lowest in California. The sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders live in an economically depressed neighborhood infested with gangs who make the schoolyard a thoroughfare for their comings and goings.

The 41-year-old school is short of money, supplies and bilingual teachers. The administration and an unhappy faculty have undergone tremendous turnover and have gotten little support from parents--who either chose to stay away or say they were turned away. Critics say the school has failed to provide even a basic education, let alone a needed transfusion of hope.

“Basically, we’ve been unable to provide the educational programs we are obligated to,” said one administrator, who asked not to be identified. “The school is an anatomy of disaster.”

In response to six weeks of campus unrest, district officials have installed a new administration and made visible improvements to the campus. Parents and students said they are cautiously hopeful, but many remain angry over what they perceive as years of official complacency with the unacceptable.

“My child and the children around my child are going to waste,” said Keith Williams, the father of Princess Denmon.

“I wouldn’t go to school over there if I were a kid,” said Margie Garrett, president of the teachers union. “The district is obligated to provide a clean, safe, healthy environment, and it hasn’t been done at Whaley. You can’t expect children to learn in that environment. You can’t expect teachers to teach.”

Little wonder, then, that a seemingly innocuous dispute last month over whether students had the right to spend student council funds escalated into rock-throwing and demonstrations. A delegation of students, parents and teachers demanded improved conditions and a new administration at two recent school board meetings. Some students and families protested by boycotting school. In recent days, attendance sometimes dropped to almost 50%. One student walkout prompted administrators to close the school at midday.

On the shortened day, many parents came by to pick up their children. Before they left, a group slipped through a normally locked gate to get their first unescorted view of the campus.

The parents passed litter-filled playing fields and broken outdoor bleachers. They inspected a girls locker room filled with graffiti and grime.

They also saw the classroom students use for physical education when it rains. The equipment closet has nothing to offer but a few frayed jump ropes. “They had equipment,” former Assistant Principal Willard McCrumby said later. “Due to vandalism we have lost it.”

The group of parents could not get into the boys locker room, which is boarded up because vandals have pulled down light fixtures and kicked in walls. Nor were they able to see inside classrooms destroyed by two fires.

“I didn’t realize it was that bad,” said Shirley Briggs, an angry parent. “We’re paying our taxes for our kids to go to this mess.”

School officials and teachers recall Whaley as a clean, orderly campus as recently as the mid-1980s. The school’s surroundings, an increasingly rough neighborhood on Compton’s northeastern edge, helped spur the decline.

“There’s an influx of a variety of gangs right in that area,” said school board President Kelvin Filer. “The school kind of separates them.”

Whaley has one security guard during school hours and an occasional patrol by school district police, but inadequate fencing prevents effective security. And school police are hopelessly outnumbered by gang members from the outside and 11- to 14-year-old student vandals from within.

One teacher recently chased away a student who was defiantly spray-painting a wall at 3 p.m. on a school day. Custodians said they have seen students deface walls in the morning between the time they arrive on campus and head to class.

“Our students are not that bad,” said one veteran teacher. Like other district employees, she asked for anonymity for fear of retaliation. “I think students are crying out to be heard. They may not know how to do this, but they want some justice done.”

Assistant Principal McCrumby, who was transferred recently to another school, blamed aging buildings for the students’ destructiveness.

“The school is run down,” McCrumby said as he fingered a piece of termite-damaged wood from a windowsill. “It’s not going to do any good to change administrations unless the district brings the facility up to reasonable standards so the kids will be proud.”

Renovation money will be hard to come by. Whaley is not among the 24 Compton schools for which the district applied for state renovation funds. Administrators said other schools were judged to have greater needs when they submitted the applications.

Even if the district applied tomorrow, prospects would be dim for a timely renovation. Current projects had to wait seven years to receive state funds.

District mismanagement has squandered millions of dollars in recent years that could have gone to help schools such as Whaley, according to district auditors. Administrators wasted the money in bungled construction projects, overpriced food service contracts, uncontrolled overtime payments and unmonitored credit card charges.

Compton Unified has supplied buckets of paint and other supplies, but such Band-Aid help does not solve underlying problems, critics said. They assail district officials for a rapid turnover of principals--five in the last six years--and for allegedly assigning problem schools such as Whaley to either unsuccessful or inexperienced administrators.

But not everyone agrees that Whaley suffered serious problems this year, including board member Amen Rahh, who said former Principal Naomi Ferns and her staff deserve nothing but praise. He said the media and outside agitators blew the school’s difficulties out of proportion.

“Every issue that has been raised to the best of my knowledge has been dealt with effectively,” he said after the unrest started.

Ferns went on sick leave Feb. 5 after a student demonstration. The school board recently transferred Ferns, who had been the Whaley principal for 20 months, to an administrative post in the district office. She said she requested the transfer because her efforts have not been appreciated and because she is being made a scapegoat for school’s difficulties.

These have included district money problems that have deprived students of a library all year. For most of the year, the school had one counselor for 950 students.

Second-class settings tell students that they are second-class citizens, said William J. Ybarra, an administrative consultant with the county education office.

“The kids feel they’re coming into a school that doesn’t care about education,” Ybarra said. “It sends out a message--as I see it--to youngsters that: ‘You are not important.’ ”

Nearly all students in an eighth-grade class recently used a writing assignment to describe their school in unflattering terms.

“Our school is bad. The students are bad. The whole school is a disaster,” one girl wrote.

Another student complained: “In the field it is trash all around. No basketball courts. No volleyball nets.”

“In Whaley Middle School, there are some bad teachers,” wrote a third student. “They don’t teach sometimes. They (spend) the entire period just taking the roll. Some of them just give work to do but they don’t explain how to do it.”

The teaching staff was rocked several years ago when a third of the faculty defected for higher pay in the nearby Los Angeles Unified School District. And it hasn’t stabilized since, according to faculty members.

The staff is anchored by promising, but inexperienced newcomers and a core of dedicated veterans. Teachers also described colleagues who are capable but almost burned out, and a few who are downright incompetent.

“The majority of our teachers, if the situation were right, could do an excellent job, if they had materials, a better working atmosphere,” a teacher said.

The school has four bilingual aides and two bilingual teachers to serve the 40% of students who speak limited English. A shortage of bilingual texts and bilingual assistance inevitably leaves some students doing little or nothing, students, parents and teachers say. Some students mark time by putting their heads on their desks; others use their notebooks to practice the “tags” they will later spray on school walls, or they hide in bathrooms and stuff rolls of tissue down toilets.

The district has ordered and delivered thousands of dollars worth of materials for limited-English speakers, Assistant Supt. Lilly Nelson said. She said her office is looking into what happened to those materials and has also ordered supplies for next year.

A shortage of bilingual help and a comparative lack of Latino employees in general have fueled charges of discrimination by Compton activist John Ortega.

“The school is racist with a capital ‘R,’ ” said Ortega, who recently presented his views at a televised new conference.

A number of school activities involve mostly black students--even though the school is about two-thirds Latino and one-third African-American. Administrators must either persuade Latinos to join in or “have high-profile, comparable activities” of interest to Latinos, Deputy Supt. Thelma Moore said.

The district contends it tries hard to recruit from the limited pool of Spanish-speaking and Latino teachers. At Whaley, the teaching staff includes 29 African-Americans, nine Anglos, two Latinos and one Filipino.

“I don’t think it’s deliberate discrimination,” a teacher said. “No one is getting what they need. This is accentuated by the fact that non-English speakers have greater needs and they’re getting almost nothing.”

Former Principal Ferns, who is African-American, is among those accused of insensitivity toward Latinos. But staff members said Ferns’ real problem was communicating with students and school employees of all races.

Faculty members faulted her for loudly berating them in front of colleagues and students and for spurning ideas for school improvement.

Ferns denied the allegations and said she was undermined by some teachers who resented her insistence on improved performance and by some administrators--on and off campus--who provided too little support with maintenance and discipline.

Acting Supt. Harold Cebrun, appointed to the post in December, has promised to improve Whaley. Custodial crews have again repainted the school. On March 13, about 100 volunteers, including students, parents, district employees and even school board President Filer painted walls, scrubbed bathrooms and tables and planted roses.

District officials know they are under the gun to demonstrate progress. Compton Unified narrowly avoided a state takeover last year on the grounds that it was failing academically. Gov. Pete Wilson vetoed the takeover legislation but added that he would consider a future takeover bill if the district does not improve.

Some Compton schools, with student populations similar to Whaley’s, have already begun to make academic strides as well as improve their appearance, Cebrun said.

Part of the problem has been a lack of parent involvement, which has also plagued other Compton schools.

Ferns said repeated efforts to enlist parent support drew little response.

Some Whaley parents said that school administrators rebuffed their previous attempts to become involved and failed to inform them about many school meetings. Jose Martell said he offered to paint walls and lay down carpet but was told that such help would violate district policy.

Parent Keith Williams said he was welcomed at school until he began to raise concerns about conditions.

No school administrator bothered to return the calls of Louise Edgar when she wanted to know why her daughter had no textbooks after two weeks of school, Edgar said. Her daughter finally received books after Edgar complained to the school board.

Edgar received a scolding rather than an apology. “You called my supervisor on me and I don’t like that,” an administrator allegedly told Edgar.

The PTA has been inactive for at least two years, according to parents and administrators.

More recently, parents and the new administrative team went from class to class and held assemblies to tell students they needed to work together to create a school in which they all could take pride.

A new message went up on the school’s front signpost: “Excuses Are the Tools of Incompetence and Incompetence Builds Monuments of Nothing.”