Ethnic Standoffs Continue to Plague City’s High Schools : Unrest: Disputes over drug turf, agitation by adults and the district’s fiscal and staffing problems are part of the complex issue. Unfounded rumors aggravate the tensions.

The incident should have been of microscopic importance:

An underclassman at Centennial High School in Compton brazenly runs into an area of campus where seniors usually hang out during lunch. Some seniors, who are playing touch football, haughtily order him to leave.

It was a small-time clash of class-pride bravado. But the result was a fight between blacks and Latinos that drew at least 40 participants and spectators.

Other racially charged incidents have occurred this school year at Compton’s other high schools--Dominguez and Compton. The fights have injured several students, prompted parents to pull children from school, led to arrests and suspensions, and disrupted a struggling school system’s attempt both to keep the peace and improve lagging academic achievement.

Some critics blame the Compton Unified School District for the disturbances. Other observers fault tensions in the community, including gang turf battles and inflammatory statements from Latino and black activists.

Parents, students and district staff are apprehensive and frustrated.

“How can you write a report when your hand is shaking?” said Rebecca Rivera, 16, a junior at Compton High. “I get scared. If it’s a group of kids with sticks and stones, I don’t care what race they are. I’m running.”

The Nov. 2 incident at Centennial High escalated when a group of African-American seniors wrestled the Latino underclassman to the ground, said school district Police Chief Michael W. Nunez. Staff members separated the students, but the underclassman then enlisted some Latino soccer players, who confronted the black seniors.

Once again, staff intervened. The two groups walked off in different directions, only to meet in a far corner of the campus and begin brawling. This time, school officials requested police backup and officers separated the combatants before anyone was badly hurt.

The unrest has been more intense at Compton High. Three separate clashes brought school business to a standstill.

On Oct. 25, student fights broke out sporadically all over campus, prompting officials to close school early.

On Nov. 4, an early morning tussle between two students--one Latino and one black--led to a brawl behind the auditorium. One student suffered a broken nose, another a broken jaw and a third cuts. Police arrested at least two students.

On Nov. 10, about 30 students traded punches in scattered fights that broke out during lunch. As with the other incidents, administrators called in school officers and Compton city police, directed all students into the nearest classrooms and locked the doors.

The situation at Compton High underscores the complexity of the problems.

The school, formerly a college campus, is a sprawling hodgepodge of buildings spread over 55 acres. Troublemakers, including gang members from off campus, have innumerable places to enter, leave or conceal themselves.

The school also has suffered through the instability of staff changes--both planned and unplanned. Through retirements and resignations, the school lost about a dozen teachers, including some who commanded widespread student respect, officials said.

In addition, only one assistant principal remains from last year’s administration. Veteran Principal Charles R. Watkins moved to a district administrative job and assistant principals were transferred.

New Principal William G. Savant Jr. arrived with a reputation for getting along with students, but his former job as a vice principal in Santa Monica did not prepare him for coping with racial brawls.

Apparently, some students have tested the new administration. Even on a calm day last week, more than a dozen students were wandering around parts of campus when they should have been in class. “All they know is that the people who used to keep them in line are gone,” one student said.

“Kids need stability,” said an administrator who asked not to be named. “The school’s leadership style had changed. This is not to say there’s anything wrong, it’s just different. When they face instability on a day-to-day basis in their personal lives, they don’t always react well to instability at school.”

What’s more, a new district policy this fall transferred responsibility for dealing with disturbances from the school police to the principal. The idea was to give principals and schools more autonomy. But practically speaking, the policy left Savant trying to quell clashes while virtually learning his way around.

Some of the fights might have been avoided. The Nov. 4 brawl at Compton High broke out in the aftermath of a fight between two students. A campus aide broke up the fight, but then let the two students walk away without discipline, officials said. Campus police said the students should have been brought to the office, and probably should have been suspended immediately. Instead, the students gathered reinforcements and began the brawl anew.

An Oct. 26 fight involving a few students at Dominguez High led the principal to call a staff meeting for the next morning. But teachers were late returning from the meeting to their classrooms, and students milling in the halls and on the grounds started a larger fight.

Tensions are riding high between some students because of problems spilling out of the neighborhoods, including community perceptions that Latinos and blacks are competing for scarce jobs and community resources; that a gain for one group is a loss for the other.

“The problems that exist on most of our campuses do not originate here,” Chief Nunez said. “They start in the community and we are part of that same community.”

Racial conflicts between blacks and Latinos are not new to this school year or unique to Compton. Such clashes have occurred at Lynwood High, Jordan High in Long Beach and several schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District. But longtime employees report that this fall’s troubles in Compton are noticeably worse than usual. One aggravating factor was a battle that broke out last summer between a Latino gang and a black gang.

“When this rivalry started between the two particular groups, it was not a racial issue,” Compton Police Chief Hourie L. Taylor said. “There was competition over turf and competition for drug trafficking.” Some of this competition probably made its way onto campus and found expression in fights between Latinos and African-Americans, officials speculate.

Taylor said the gang war has cooled. Still, police said that some fights can be traced directly to non-students, usually gang members, entering a campus looking for trouble. And recently, some of these suspected gang members--black and Latino--have made a point of intimidating or beating students of the other ethnicity, according to school police reports.

Aggravating the tension are rapidly spreading, unfounded rumors: that Latino or black students at one school have backpacks full of guns, that a teacher passed out screwdrivers for students to battle students of another ethnicity, that students of one race were being beaten with belt buckles in a bathroom.

Students of both ethnicities have been hurt, but none seriously. Students of both ethnicities have started fights. Only a handful of students are instigators, but others--still a small portion of the student body--get caught up in the fights once they start.

“Friends are fighting friends. They don’t even know why they are fighting,” said Elba Ortega, 17, a Compton High senior. Her mother kept her home from school after one flare-up.

Most students interviewed echoed the views of Diana Velasquez, 17, a Dominguez High senior. “I think what’s happening here is really dumb,” she said. “We need to get together.”

La Tina Brown, 16, who deplores the tensions, said she narrowly escaped being attacked during one of the disturbances at Compton High. “Three guys were about to jump on me just because of the color I was,” said Brown, a black 11th-grader.

Freddy Garcia, 15, a Latino, tried to avoid a fight when he was confronted by several students. “I was trying to say we don’t want to fight you anymore, but they kept coming and they beat me up,” said the Compton High sophomore, who escaped with bruises and scrapes.

Some students and officials blame part of the unrest on adults.

Latino activists, some from outside Compton, have staged numerous protests outside of schools, they say. They tell Latino students and parents they are being mistreated by a racist, mostly African-American administration. They urge students to boycott schools.

“Most of the problems is blacks attacking Latinos and that’s the way it has always been,” said John Ortega, a Compton attorney and longtime district critic.

This talk angers newly elected board member Gorgonio Sanchez Jr. “Some of the concerns are legitimate, but you’re not going to solve anything by yelling in the middle of the street,” he said.

Some black activists also are angry with the district. They have accused state-appointed administrator Stanley G. Oswalt, who is white, of favoring Latinos and discriminating against black students and employees. The district fell under state control as a condition of receiving an emergency state loan.

School board member Amen Rahh has stated again and again that Oswalt and his administration are guilty of racist, neo-Nazi policies, particularly against black employees and students.

“Many of them hate blacks so bad they sleep with the lights on,” Rahh said at the November board meeting. “We’ve got to organize and have massive demonstrations and cause chaos.” He said that district employees should defy the orders of the state-appointed administration because it is running Compton schools illegally.

“You’re not going to get anything until you raise hell in this society,” Rahh told spectators and a television audience.

Said one administrator: “The kids are acting out what the adults say. We have adults inside and outside who are inflaming the fights.”

The unrest has prompted parents to keep students at home for safety reasons. Attendance is typically down 30% after an incident, officials said. Some teachers said they lose half or even most of their students after a big fight. Some students stay out for days, they said.

Ortega and Rahh each have said that they are fighting injustice, that they are expressing the sentiments of unhappy parents and students. But they insisted they are not causing unrest.