Anxiety Grows After Another Campus Dispute

Parents pleaded with the Pomona Board of Education this week for help in easing tensions at Pomona High School after 100 black and Latino students faced off on campus in the second racial incident in two weeks.

The students squared off along racial lines Monday after an African American student pitched an apple at a Latino student during lunch, said school officials, parents and students. Two weeks earlier, police dismissed more than 100 students from campus following a racially charged brawl. Ten students were arrested, and one girl was treated at Pomona Valley Hospital for minor injuries.

Although no one was hurt in this week’s incident and the students were quickly dispersed, it drove more than a dozen parents to the Pomona Board of Education meeting Tuesday night to ask for help in calming the campus.

“There has been no healing yet at Pomona High,” parent Paul Hardy told school board members. He asked school officials to develop classes and curricula to promote ethnic tolerance among Pomona’s schoolchildren.

“We need your help in developing a plan of action,” said Hardy, chairman of the Parent Advisory Committee formed in the wake of the first racial brawl. Hardy, a sixth-grade teacher in Ontario, has a son, Macheo, who is a freshman at Pomona High.

Board of Education President Nancy McCracken, who was sworn in at the meeting, promised to look into the parents’ concerns and help come up with a plan to ease tensions.

“This issue has special concern for me because I’m a Pomona High alumna,” she said.

About 30 parents and teachers have drafted a letter to school administrators asking for increased security, multicultural programs and better enforcement of school policies on tardiness.

The high school has already implemented “attendance blitzes,” in which teachers lock their doors promptly after the bell rings and force students to get tardy slips from the attendance office. On Monday, 287 of the school’s 1,750 students were late to their first-period classes and were not let in until they obtained the slips. By mid-morning, only five students were late to class.

“There were no consequences for actions before,” said Pomona High Assistant Principal Cheryl Portillo. “Kids could get away with collecting hundreds of tardy slips and just saunter in and out of class.”

A dozen parent volunteers are still patrolling campus in the wake of the first racial incident. And Johnny Perez, student body president of Pomona High, has contacted professors at Pitzer College who have been working with the Alhambra School District to develop a multicultural curriculum.

But some teachers on campus say the district still needs to do more.

“It’s like they’re trying to put a Band-Aid over a gaping wound,” said English teacher Jim Lehan, who said he lost some of his faith in the school district when a student who hit him received only a two-day suspension.

Added biology teacher Jose Morales, “The tardy blitzes work OK, the increased parent involvement is great, but the real problem is that the administration doesn’t want to admit it’s a racial problem.

“The real problem is, kids are not being educated properly to live in a multicultural environment like Pomona or Los Angeles County.”