District Raises Penalties in Bid to Ease Campus Violence : Education: Students may now be expelled for fighting and arrested for truancy. Officials hope to ease ethnic tensions blamed for recent clashes.

Students caught fighting on campus more than once face being expelled from the Compton Unified School District, and if they skip school they can be arrested, school officials said.

The measures are among several adopted recently by state-appointed administrator Stanley G. Oswalt after district officials met with parents and local police. The changes are an attempt to quell ethnic tensions, which are blamed for a semester that has been marred by widespread fighting at the district’s high schools.

Under the new rules, students in middle and high schools face a three-day suspension if they are caught fighting. On a second offense, they will be sent to another school or expelled from the district. Formerly, students could be suspended up to three times before they were expelled, district spokeswoman Arianna Barrios said.

All students involved in a fight would be sent home that day, but a review by a school administrator would determine if a particular student was at fault or was acting in self-defense.

With the Compton Police Department, the district also is reinstating a program called Operation Clean Sweep, which was dropped about two years ago because of city budget cuts.

Several times a week, two or three detectives from the robbery and homicide divisions will team up with school district officers to search areas near the schools and arrest any student found off campus without permission, Police Lt. J.A. Flores said. Police are providing the extra officers as a free service to the cash-strapped school district.

Previously, Barrios said, students were suspended after being absent several days, and multiple offenders were expelled.

In recent months, violence among students has escalated in the district. On Oct. 25, several fights prompted officials to close Compton High School early. On Nov. 4, two students were arrested in a racially charged skirmish. About a week later, a fight involving 30 students broke out.

Administrators cited tensions between black and Latino students as the cause of a Nov. 2 fight at Centennial High School that drew about 40 participants and spectators. Domiguez High was the site of another fight Oct. 26.

As an experiment that will be applied at other schools if it is successful, Compton High School will require students to carry identification cards to help administrators keep non-students off campus.

The district also is arranging for the National Conference (formerly the National Conference of Christians and Jews) to teach students how to resolve conflicts peacefully and how to stop campus fighting before it gets out of control. The organization will also hold seminars for students on multicultural sensitivity, Barrios said, such as explaining why a casual comment by a student of one ethnic group might be taken as an insult by someone of another group.

Other changes planned to help reduce ethnic tension:

The district will place at least one Spanish-speaking employee in every school office. Barrios said the district has had numerous complaints from Spanish-speaking parents, charging that they have been treated rudely or ignored while visiting their children’s schools. In addition, all district employees will be required to attend a training seminar on customer service and communication.

“(Parents) are also our customers,” Barrios said, “and they should feel comfortable coming on our campuses.”

The district is accepting applications for a Human Relations Advisory Committee, which will examine ethnic problems and race relations in the district and make recommendations to the school board on how to solve them. Any community member is eligible.

Rumors will be combatted with a hot line, expected to be installed in early January. The hot line will be staffed by students to clear up rumors after a controversial incident or to provide information in a crisis, Barrios said. It also would have a recorded message with information on school and community events that could affect the campus.

For example, fighting broke out earlier this semester the day after a gang and drug bust in Compton. A hot line could have alerted students to the possibility of campus unrest, Barrios said.

A community forum featuring state Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco) will be held Jan. 6 to discuss recent changes in the district and what the community can do to heal the schools. It will be from 3 to 5 p.m. in the Compton High auditorium, 601 S. Acacia St.

Some parents complained that the measures do not go far enough.

Dolores Phillips, whose daughter attends Compton High School, said the district needs to solve a much larger problem.

“The system should put more emphasis on making sure the kids are at the right grade level for their abilities, and for bilingual kids, making sure they have enough English skills,” Phillips said.

Phillips said students are more likely to cut classes if they are not at the proper grade level, and fights can begin when students poke fun at a classmate who is not at the same learning level as the rest of the group.

But district PTA President Ida Mae Carter said she welcomes any attempts to stop truancy and student fights.

“Something has to be done,” she said. “We just can’t have them fighting one another.”