School Furor Mirrors L.A.’s Struggles With Diversity : Education: Arts High teacher is reassigned after booing a student play. Uproar centers on racism, artistic freedom.

If you met Don Bondi, you’d see he is a dancer. At 61, his body twists and turns with nearly the ease of a kid’s. His gait is deliberate, toes cocked outward, heels resting on an invisible cushion. His face belongs to an artist: It is lined, passionate, short of patience for those who do not share his vision.

For nine years, Bondi has been teaching at the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts, an alternative school for budding artists and a cherished success in an educational system often associated with failure.

But since last month, Bondi has been barred from the halls of Arts High, reassigned indefinitely to a desk job at a school for troubled children. His offense: booing at a student Mexican-heritage production that portrayed Gov. Pete Wilson as a bumbling bigot who speaks in racial slurs.

Moments after his protest, Bondi, who is white, was confronted by a Latina school board member who warned him to “control your racism.” Within the hour, board member Maria Elena Gaitan, whose son was among the actors in the show, had Bondi removed from his job.

The reassignment of Bondi, a founding Arts High faculty member and chairman of the dance department, has thrown the Eastside school into crisis, turning a behind-the-scenes struggle over racial diversity into a nasty public feud.

For several years, Arts High, where nearly half of the student body and most of the faculty is white, has been grappling with how to expand the presence of minorities--an awkward transition at a place that has been, by design, blind to color. With Bondi’s ouster, the elite sanctuary for creative teens is being forced to openly confront one of the thorniest realities of the outside world: how to deal with a mostly white Los Angeles becoming a Los Angeles that is mostly not. Some fear the controversy threatens the school’s very soul.

In the weeks since the Wilson parody, students, faculty, administrators and parents have clashed in a disquieting debate over political correctness, racism and artistic freedom. “It is a reflection of what is going on in our time, if not at our school,” said senior Rigo Jimenez, 17, who directed the Mexican heritage production. “People here are not exposed to that.”

In an open letter distributed on campus, student body President Mosa Maxwell-Smith and senior theater student Justin Wheeler complained that Bondi’s reassignment is a move toward the “destruction” of Arts High. Two weeks ago, dozens of students of all races skipped classes to protest outside the school, which is on the campus of Cal State Los Angeles and draws its 480 students from districts across the county through a rigorous audition process.

“We are artists!” the letter said. “This institution was founded to perpetuate and teach art, to allow a haven of creativity for young artists of this community, not as a political arena for racial debate or a pawn to be wasted in a game of political intrigue.”

Bondi, an accomplished dancer and choreographer with a loud voice and short fuse, has become an instant symbol of the school’s internal wrenching. Friends see a dedicated and caring artist who has been victimized for being white and daring to speak his mind. Detractors describe an explosive and culturally insensitive old-timer who has a history of run-ins with administrators and is out of sync with changing Los Angeles.

Bondi says he is a convenient target in a debate that has grown much larger than he.

“This is a political thing,” he said. “It has nothing to do with kids, except, unfortunately, young people are being used.”

The moments that pushed Bondi to center stage came near the end of the hourlong show April 21 when a young actor portraying Wilson began a rambling monologue about Wilson’s immigration policies. His remarks, which lasted only a few minutes, wasted no time in depicting the white governor as a racist.

“Don’t get me wrong, I am not racist,” the Wilson character said. “I love Mexicans--everyone should have one. . . . I even shop at K-Martinez, I mean Kmart. And I love Pick ‘n’ Spick.”

That Bondi was offended by the scene was immediately evident. As the monologue came to a close, he joined a chorus of boos and hisses from the audience. Some of those jeering agreed with the portrayal and were protesting Wilson’s politics. Others, like Bondi, saw the skit as an outrageous caricature of a white person. When the stage went dark, the auditorium fell mostly silent except for Bondi’s continued objections, audible on a student videotape of the production.

“How vulgar!” he announced from his seat near the rear. “A lack of taste!”

It was then that Gaitan, vice president of the county Board of Education, left her seat near the stage and approached Bondi.

“Control your racism!” she ordered from the aisle.

As Gaitan returned to her seat, student director Jimenez appeared on stage.

“If we offended anyone. . .,” he started to say.

“You have!” Bondi interrupted, his voice thick with rage.

“You needed it then!” an angry Gaitan shouted from across the auditorium.

Once the show ended, Gaitan approached Bondi again and escorted him outside. According to witnesses, the two engaged in a heated discussion en route to the principal’s office, with Gaitan accusing Bondi of racism and at one point pushing him. Later, the witnesses said, Gaitan’s son joined the fray, cursing at Bondi and threatening to physically harm him.

“It happened in front of 10 to 20 students,” said Leslie Lopez, 17, a senior dance student and Bondi supporter. “They were yelling at each other. . . . She told him that everything he did for multiculturalism at the school was for show. She said that the dance department was racist too.”

Within an hour, Bondi was handed papers placing him on temporary leave and ordered off campus. He was forbidden to return for performances of a play about the Holocaust that he had directed, and was allowed to attend his department’s annual dance concert only in the company of an administration chaperon. Some students protested the decision by leaving an empty chair on stage and dressing in white with black gags.

Bondi was subsequently instructed to report to an alternative school in Whittier while the county personnel division investigates the incident.

Gaitan did not return telephone calls from The Times. County education spokeswoman Laurie Twineham said Gaitan and her colleagues on the Board of Education--all of whom are appointed by the county Board of Supervisors--refused requests to be interviewed.

Bondi has been shaken to the core by the controversy but remains unrepentant.

“I booed because I wanted to make a point,” he said. “And booing is a natural part of the theater. . . . Whether you like Pete Wilson or not, we are not here to defame people. There needs to be some guidance for young people as to what is appropriate in art. We are there to guide the young people, and I am always looking for innovative ways to do that.”

Arts High Principal Bo Vitolo said Bondi was reassigned with full pay, but would not comment further on the investigation. She described the Wilson skit as a “production piece” intended to draw a reaction from the audience, just as many professional films and plays do. She said she did not consider the parody racist, although she said the actor portraying Wilson “got swept away” by the role and spontaneously added lines that were not in the script submitted to a staff adviser.

As for Bondi’s booing, Vitolo said: “Freedom of expression has limitations, or we would have anarchy.”

The furor created by the Bondi-Gaitan clash is complicated by the fact that both have attracted unusual attention in the past.

Last year, Bondi said, he was accused by two students of abuse after he squeezed a prickly seed pod in their hands during a class. Bondi, who said he was never charged or disciplined in the incident, said he has used the technique for years to demonstrate that dancing is painful. One class actually presented him with decorated pods as a graduation gift.

Bondi has also clashed with administrators over issues of ethnic diversity. Although he has been credited with winning grants for multicultural programs dealing with Japanese, African American, Native American and Latino art and dance, he has also flatly opposed the school’s growing emphasis on diversity, saying it undermines the unifying message art is meant to foster.

Earlier this year, he wrote a note to administrators complaining about a survey that asks incoming students to identify their ethnic origin. The form listed 20 classifications, only one for whites.

“This type of document is divisive and separatist, possibly appealing to the political correct, but then in Nazi Germany it was politically correct to segregate . . . any group not considered ‘Aryan’ by those in power,” he wrote.

David Flores, director of the county’s division of alternative education, which oversees Arts High, responded with a memo describing Bondi’s views as disturbing and ignorant and “reflective of your lack of sensitivity.”

Gaitan has made a name for herself at Arts High because of her willingness to question what she has called the school’s “Eurocentric” curriculum.

According to a 1992 memo from former Principal James Cusak, Gaitan pushed to have recruitment materials printed in Spanish and questioned whether the school’s program reflected “the cultural composition” of Los Angeles.

In addition, Gaitan’s involvement in the education of her son, now a senior, has struck some teachers, parents and students as inappropriate and meddlesome. They contend that she has used her influence to intervene on his behalf.

Paul Warner, a film director who works as a guest teacher at the school, said he was once summoned to a meeting with Flores and Gaitan after dismissing Gaitan’s son from a school show for absenteeism.

“It was very, very unpleasant,” Warner said. “I was subtly accused of mistreating her son because I threw him out for disciplinary reasons. She has said that she doesn’t want to interfere in the school or her son’s education, but she has done the opposite.”

Principal Vitolo acknowledged that Gaitan “wears two hats,” but said she has taken the same interest in her son’s education as many other parents do in their children’s schooling.

Administrator Flores said the issues surrounding the Bondi-Gaitan controversy have struck such a chord because they illustrate the pains of the larger discussion about diversity in a county where whites make up only a quarter of public high school students.

“This is part of the . . . demographic shifts we see in Los Angeles County, and sometimes not everybody is comfortable with those changes,” Flores said. “We have concerns from the community about access from all ethnic groups, and we have concerns from the staff that maybe things are changing too fast and from students that perhaps there may be preferential treatment in some cases for students from different ethnic minorities.”

Flores met a week ago with members of Friends of LACHSA, a parents’ organization that helps set policy at the school, and agreed to create a task force to look into some of the problems.

Parents, who have been split over Bondi’s handling and the move toward greater diversity, requested the meeting. Some have called the school to complain, while others have written to the Board of Supervisors demanding Bondi’s reinstatement and disciplinary action against Gaitan.

“It is ironic that the biggest thing to come out of the handling of this case may be that the students will experience firsthand a brand of injustice at the hands of the administration that is precisely the kind that was hoped to be addressed in the Cinco de Mayo play in the first place,” wrote Douglas B. Millar, a parent from Torrance.

Judy Perez, co-president of the parents’ group, said supporters of a more diverse school have been unfairly characterized by critics as wanting to hastily alter the school by eliminating white teachers and lowering admission standards. Perez, who has served on audition panels for new students, said that ethnicity has never played a role in the panels’ decisions, and that teachers should only be replaced through attrition.

“I don’t know anybody who is saying we should let anyone go because their skin is the wrong color,” Perez said. “But students need role models. If all of the faces students see as teachers are white, where are the role models?”

Well-known dancer and choreographer Rudy Perez, a guest instructor at Arts High who is not related to Judy Perez, said more than four decades working as a minority artist has taught him that racial agendas and art do not mix. He said Arts High is in the midst of an identity crisis, caught between its mission to be the best arts school possible and a social agenda to become more racially diverse.

“They have to decide what they want to be. Being an arts school means being different from other public schools,” he said. “It should have nothing to do with race. It should be about individuals. When I grew up in New York, we didn’t go around claiming pieces of the rainbow. We all considered ourselves Americans.”