Black Group Accuses Principal of Racism : Education: The organization claims prejudice is tolerated at the new Aliso Viejo Middle School, but most parents and teachers support the school’s chief.

At the grand opening for Aliso Viejo Middle School in October, parents and teachers rolled out a red carpet, cheered and applauded as students stepped off arriving buses like the proverbial conquering heroes.

This would be the school of the future. Resting in a peaceful South County canyon along meandering Aliso Creek, the new school, with its cutting-edge technology, felt far removed from the problems confronting its urban counterparts.

But now, just two months later, the school is struggling to retain its luster and maintain its focus. Administrators, teachers, parents and students are taking sides over recent allegations that the school’s principal is racially insensitive and that she has fostered a climate that tolerates prejudice. Aliso Viejo’s enrollment is 87% white, 6% Latino, 4% Asian and 3% black.

“It’s been very disruptive. Teachers feel attacked. They’re angry. A lot of kids are angry,” said Aliso Viejo Principal Cheryl Lampe.

Lampe, 48, strongly defends her record, saying that in her 25 years of teaching and school administration, she has never faced such charges. The controversy, she says, threatens to erode her ability to enforce the standards she sets for the school: “Everything I believe in is being compromised.”

The issue arose in November, when a group of parents and relatives of black students met with district officials. On Dec. 13, they aired their complaints at a meeting of the Capistrano Unified School District Board of Trustees. At that session, they called on the district to investigate a series of incidents in which, they said, students had been harassed, falsely accused of being gang members and ridiculed in front of their classmates because of their race.

District officials have responded by assigning a committee of teachers, parents and district staff to investigate. A report from the committee is expected in mid-January, said Assistant Supt. Tom Anthony. District officials have declined to comment before the investigation is complete. Trustees made no comment at the meeting.

Yet in the weeks before the winter break, the allegations of racial intolerance had become the talk of the school’s students, teachers and staff; tensions increased and people took sides.

Leading the call for an investigation has been a group called African American Parents and Concerned Citizens of South Orange County. The organization was formed nearly two years ago when its members’ children complained of feeling isolated and being subjected to hostility in South County’s predominantly white communities.

It is a loosely organized confederation with about 50 members that has been encouraging the Capistrano school district for more than a year to improve its minority hiring and increase programs recognizing such events as Black History Month and Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, members say.

*

Pam Lathan is one of the group’s founders and its current education chairperson. Most recently, Lathan said, members became concerned about possible racism at Aliso Viejo when they compared notes on what their children, who are students at the school, began telling them. What the parents originally thought were unrelated and isolated incidents seemed to be part of a pattern of discrimination, she said.

“We have talked to multiple children . . . and these children are experiencing problems,” said Lathan, whose daughter attends the school. “It is our responsibility as an organization to say (to the district), ‘There is a problem you need to look at.’ ”

After discussing their concerns in private with district officials, they decided to go public at the trustees’ meeting. A Latino student also spoke at that session, saying teachers had harassed and discriminated against him. The group has written two letters to the district, listing more than a dozen examples of things that have left minority students feeling singled out, Lathan said.

They range from several black boys being accused of engaging in gang-related behavior to a teacher not apologizing to a nonwhite student whom the teacher had incorrectly accused of a theft. A white student admitted to the theft later.

“If the district comes back and says all of the allegations are unfounded, then fine,” Lathan said. “We’ll decide after that where we go.

“We’re not trying to make everything in this world a black/white issue,” she added. “But we don’t want our children to be abused. That’s all this is about.”

Most teachers and leaders of the school’s Parent Teacher Student Assn., which is predominantly white, have responded strongly by supporting Lampe. They have written letters to newspapers and circulated flyers declaring support for her and questioning the tactics and motives of the African American parents group.

These parents and teachers claim the allegations against Lampe and her staff are fabrications, distortions or exaggerations of incidents involving minority students.

“We are angry at the people who are doing everything they can to create the illusion that there is a problem with the way we have treated our culturally diverse students,” said a letter signed by 28 of the school’s 35 teachers. “Our reputation as a staff has been defamed by these people who, for whatever reason, feel the need to invent a racial bias issue at our beautiful new school.”

*

The allegations have placed one member of the school’s staff in a difficult situation.

Debbie Meyers, an assistant principal, is one of the founding members of the African American parents group. Her son attends the school and her husband, Donald, was among those who spoke to the board of trustees.

“We cannot allow our children to be educated in a horrible environment,” Donald Meyers told the board.

Debbie Meyers declined to comment on the allegations made by the group but said she did not want to discourage her husband from voicing concerns raised by their son.

To protect me, “he would rather be quiet,” she said of her husband. “But I honestly said to him: ‘You have to stand for what you believe in.’ I could hinder him from being vocal on the aspect of my son, or I could let him speak out and let the chips fall where they may.”

The turmoil brought on by the allegations capped off an already trying first semester for the school.

With construction still being completed at the end of summer, Aliso Viejo’s students and teachers were forced to spend the first month at Niguel Hills Middle School in Laguna Niguel. Some say the complaints by sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grade students could stem in part from their being in a new school, where many classrooms and science labs are not yet fully functioning.

Eventually, the school will have numerous high-tech wonders, including a fiber-optic information system and advanced computer labs.

Such advances in education are what Lampe prefers to talk about.

Lampe took the reins of the school in April. After a statewide search, the district chose her based on the strong reputation she built as a teacher and eventually a co-principal at Hawthorne Intermediate School in the city of Hawthorne.

Unlike predominantly white Aliso Viejo, Hawthorne Intermediate’s enrollment is racially diverse. Its student population is 44% Latino, 35% black, 10% white, 7% Asian, 2% Pacific Islander and 2% Filipino.

Parents, teachers, administrators and members of the Hawthorne community describe Lampe as a visionary educator with a seemingly unlimited drive and a talent for motivating students and teachers. They were shocked when told she is accused of being racially intolerant.

“Cheryl? I find that hard to believe,” said Nelson Wong, an engineer with North American Rockwell who worked with Lampe on introducing computers at the Hawthorne school. “I’m Chinese American and I never picked up on that from Cheryl. That utterly amazes me.”

James Baker, a black school board member in Hawthorne and a civilian employee of the Los Angeles Police Department, also praised Lampe for her leadership and fairness.

“She had the respect of her staff, the students and parents,” said Baker, adding that his two daughters received a “great educational foundation” from Lampe and her staff.

“No matter what race a child was, if a child needed to be disciplined, he or she was dealt with based on what they had done at that particular time,” Baker said.

*

Lampe is disappointed that the parents lodged the complaints without discussing their concerns in detail with her. She said their allegations are based on “bits and pieces” of information from students, whose stories are sometimes distorted or untrue.

She said she has never singled out any students for harsher or preferential treatment.

“Kids are kids,” she said. “That’s the basic law wherever I operate.”

As an example, she said, of the 19 students she suspended during the semester, 16 were white, two Latino and one Asian. “I haven’t suspended one black student on this campus,” she said.

What disturbs her most about how the issue has been raised, she said, is what it has done to her attempts to create a harmonious, disciplined student body.

“It has affected the kids,” she said. “There isn’t a day goes by that we don’t have challenges from our minority students. . . . It’s almost as if they are saying, ‘You can’t touch us now.’

“And we can’t send that message to kids. We send the wrong message if we say we’re going to have different sets of rules for different kids.”

Still, Lampe said she is in the process of planning a series of discussions, conferences and assemblies on diversity for January.

“If there are perceptions and feelings out there,” she said, “we can’t ignore them.”