Classes Resume at Paramount High After Racial Fight

Students returned to classes under tight security at Paramount High School on Wednesday for the first time since smoldering racial tensions erupted into a melee Friday.

Six Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies with metal detectors were assigned to the campus to check students for weapons, but none were found, authorities said.

The half day of classes scheduled Wednesday ended without a disturbance, school officials said.

Supt. Michele Lawrence said the school will only be open for half a day today to give students more time to cool off.

Administrators will decide today whether regular schedules will resume Friday, Lawrence said. The campus had been closed Monday and Tuesday for the Presidents’ Day holiday and a previously planned day when only the staff was to report to school.

Students were expected to spend the rest of the week discussing racial problems with teachers and peer counselors. Extra administrators were assigned to the campus.

Twenty-five students have been suspended for undetermined times for their involvement in Friday’s fight. Some may be expelled, school officials said.

The incident was apparently sparked by a fight between a Latino student and a black student earlier in the week.

Paramount Unified School District officials confirmed that there had been tensions between the high school’s 2,300 Latino students and its 500 black students earlier in the week and said Friday’s brawl involved 30 to 50 students in the initial fight.

The melee began near the end of the lunch period, when someone pulled a fire alarm and a group of students turned over a couple of trash cans, school officials said. Others started running around the campus and refused to go back to class. Sheriff’s deputies were called, but some students refused to leave the campus.

“Parents and students are very frightened, and they’re saying tensions are continuing to build,” said school board member Richard Caldwell, a former principal at Paramount. “Unless the administration and the teachers watch this very carefully, there’s always a chance some student’s going to be injured.”

Some parents refused to let their children return to class Wednesday. At a school board meeting Tuesday night, parent Diana Torres complained that last week’s brawl caught district administrators off-guard.

“They say it’s been escalating for years, yet they’re not ready for it,” Torres said. Parents are meeting at the high school Monday to discuss problems.

Many parents who escorted their children to school urged them to call home if problems erupted.

“Today was my daughter’s birthday. I was going to make her stay home,” parent Jose Cota said after dropping off his 17-year-old daughter. “It’s crazy with all of this going on.”

One African American student made light of the problems at the school, but said many of his black friends are not taking any chances.

“They don’t want to get jumped,” junior Terence Grayson, 17, said.

A district spokeswoman confirmed that the number of absences was higher than usual: 363 students were absent from their third-period class Wednesday, 160 more than on a typical day at the high school.