Local School Districts Expel More Students Over Weapons : Education: Boards adopt ‘zero tolerance’ policies. Elementary and middle-grade campuses help fuel the trend.

A student was expelled in an Antelope Valley district after he assaulted his teacher earlier this year. The student was in the second grade.

Such incidents cause many who moved to the Antelope Valley to escape escalating crime in the Los Angeles Basin to shake their heads in dismay. Violence on school campuses is just one example of the urban problems infringing on the once-remote desert area.

Encroaching urban crime is most evident in the region’s elementary and middle schools, where the expulsion rate is rapidly increasing. Students as young as 7 are being expelled for offenses ranging from vandalism to weapons possession on campus, officials said.

In the Palmdale School District, the largest K-8 district in the Antelope Valley with an enrollment of about 15,600, there were no expulsions during the 1991-92 school year.

But this year, although enrollment increased by just 1,000 students, there have been 14 expulsions for weapons possessions, assaults and vandalism. At least two more are pending, including a recent incident in which a student brought a gun on campus, the first in the district’s history.

In the K-8 Lancaster School District, the number of students considered for expulsion more than doubled from 21 last year to 47 this year, including two cases in which students had guns on campus.

While these numbers are perhaps not startling compared to those in the Los Angeles Basin, they are record-setting for the Antelope Valley.

“Our community’s changing,” said Lancaster School District Supt. David Alvarez said. “The schools are just a reflection of our community.”

Palmdale Supt. Forrest McElroy said the Board of Trustees in the K-8 district has become less tolerant of student behavior that harms, or has the potential to harm, others.

In the past when a student was found to have a pocketknife, for example, it would be confiscated. Then, the student’s parents would be notified and that would be the end of it, although sometimes a student would be suspended for a day or two, McElroy said. Now possession of a pocketknife on campus is likely to result in an expulsion.

“There’s a great deal more violence in society today, with youngsters as well as adults,” McElroy said. “We can’t look at kids getting into fights as little squabbles. We have to be concerned.”

Expulsions are on the rise throughout Los Angeles County, according to records. As in the Antelope Valley, they are occurring at increasing rates in the lower grades.

The mammoth Los Angeles Unified School District, with a K-12 enrollment of about 640,000, expelled 301 of its 490,000 K-8 students last year, according to the district. Although figures are not yet available, district sources said that number will be higher this year.

Phil Kauble, a consultant with the Los Angeles County Office of Education, said the more serious incidents have steadily been showing up in the lower grades over the past few years.

“I wish I had all the answers as to why these things happen,” he said.

Kauble said this year will probably be a record-setter in terms of expulsions throughout the county, although figures will not be available for a few months. Numerous districts that have never before expelled a student have done so for the first time this year, he said.

“We don’t know why,” said Kauble, who is in charge of the county office’s attendance and administrative services division, which handles expulsion appeals.

He speculated that the increased gang activity in Southern California and the rise of violence in all aspects of society have affected the schools, which at one time were considered safe havens.

School districts, Kauble said, have also faced shrinking budgets for several years and are left with fewer resources to assist those called “at-risk” students.

And boards of trustees everywhere are adopting an attitude dubbed “zero tolerance,” specifically when it comes to weapons on campus, he said.

In the Antelope Valley, Kauble said the tremendous growth has played a part in the rise in expulsions.

“Anytime you increase numbers at the rate that area’s growing, you’re going to have problems,” he said. Many of the Antelope Valley K-8 school districts have experienced an annual double-digit growth rate for several years running.

Another factor is the lack of parent involvement in the lives of their children, officials said.

“Where are their parents? Why do these kids feel the need to do this activity, this behavior?” asked Peter Robles, president of an Antelope Valley organization that works with students, particularly Latinos, to stress the importance of education.

Sue James, chief psychologist with the Lancaster School District, said there is less community support for families than in the past and that “culturally, our families are in a real crisis.”

Statistics tell a different story in the Westside Union District. The number of expulsions still can be counted on one hand.

Supt. George (Bud) Reams, believes that involved parents are the major reason why expulsions are so low in the 5,300-student district he oversees.

In the 1991-92 school year there were two expulsions--one for alcohol on campus and the other involving a fight, Reams said.

This year a student was expelled after he brought an empty .32-caliber pistol on campus but, Reams said, he did so only to show it to friends. The student’s expulsion was suspended and he was assigned to independent study.

The other expulsions in the district this year involved a student having a marijuana cigarette on campus, and a fight in which three female students attacked a fourth.

“We tend to have a more responsible citizenry,” Reams said of his district, located in the west Antelope Valley where home prices are highest. “We have parents who care, who supervise their kids.”

Even school districts in the rural areas of the Antelope Valley, where superintendents say “everyone knows everyone else,” are finding a different type of student in their schools.

Two students were expelled from the one-school Hughes-Elizabeth Lakes Union School District this year, said Supt. Michael Harris, noting that they are the first expulsions in years in the West Valley district. One of the expelled students brought alcohol on campus and the other threatened a schoolmate with a pocketknife.

Both expulsions were suspended, Harris said, and the students were allowed to return to the 485-student school under strict guidelines.

At another of the Antelope Valley’s small school districts, the Soledad-Agua Dulce Union School District, the year may pass without an expulsion, although Supt. Tom Brown said there is one being discussed.

The 1,650-student district, which has nearly doubled in size since the mid-1980s, has had a maximum of one expulsion a year in the past decade, Brown said.

“We have good kids,” Brown said. “They respond to the discipline program we have in place.”

That program, however, is different than in other north Los Angeles County districts where possession of a pocketknife on campus can result in an expulsion. Since Jan. 1, Brown said, the Soledad district has seen a significant increase in the number of the small knives on campus, but it responds the way other districts did years ago: confiscation, a call to parents and often suspension.

The zero-tolerance attitude has not yet taken hold in the three-school, K-8 district that serves students in the communities of Acton and Agua Dulce.

Students are not threatening one another or teachers with knives, and Brown pointed out that so far there have been no repeat offenders.

“The Antelope Valley is becoming more like many other urban areas,” said Michael Geisser, supervising psychologist for the Palmdale School District. “It’s starting to reflect some of the same problems you find in the bigger city.”