Students Stage Walkout in Protest of Prop. 187

Hoisting a Mexican flag and chanting “No on 187!” about 220 students staged a walkout from Rio Mesa High School on Friday morning and marched several miles toward Oxnard High, intent on persuading more students to leave school and join their protest.

But the marchers, opposing a ballot measure that would bar illegal immigrants from the classroom, were stopped a block from their destination by police, school officials, and a barricade of empty yellows buses.

The students then retreated to Plaza Park in downtown Oxnard, where they were ushered by police onto the school buses and taken back to the campus.

The march against Proposition 187 was generally peaceful, police said, though a few students threw rocks at passing cars, and many ripped election signs from the streets as they walked by, converting them into protest posters.

Too young to vote, the students said they were expressing their opinion on the controversial ballot measure the only way they could. “Most of our friends and family are undocumented people,” said 15-year-old Rosie Collazo as she marched down Central Avenue. “Maybe we’re a bunch of high school students, but we know what we’re doing.”

About 62% of Rio Mesa’s 2,200 students are Latino, many of them from Oxnard neighborhoods heavily populated by immigrants.

Word of a walkout had been spreading around the high school for several days when at 9 a.m. Friday, students began milling around the school courtyard instead of going to their second class.

“The bell rung,” 15-year-old Thelma Valenzuela said. “Nobody went to class. Everybody started saying ‘Mexico! Mexico!”’

School officials, who had received reports late Thursday that students were plotting to march off campus, planned to herd students into the school cafeteria, where microphones and loudspeakers were set up to hold an anti-Proposition 187 rally.

“We wanted to ensure that it was a peaceful demonstration,” Oxnard Union High School District Supt. Bill Studt said. “But some students were not satisfied with just venting their frustrations on school grounds.”

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Students said that when school officials refused to open the gates, they started scaling the tall chain-link fences surrounding the school.

About 100 students hopped over the fences and marched away, Studt said. Fearing that other students would injure themselves jumping the fence, school officials opened a gate, and another 200 joined the march, Studt said.

Sheriff’s deputies arrived shortly afterward, but instead of ordering the students back to school, they told them they could hold a march as long as it was orderly.

About 75 students returned to school anyway, Studt said. Most of the students at the high school never left school grounds.

The protesters marched down Central Avenue while deputies drove alongside, keeping the youths on the road’s shoulder. Several cars honked in agreement and waved, drawing cheers from the jubilant students.

When the marchers drew near Oxnard High, they were met by Oxnard Police, a barricade of buses, and a group of school officials with bullhorns who asked them to board the buses back to Rio Mesa High because they had accomplished their goal.

District officials, worried that students at Oxnard High would join the march, asked police to detain the protesters before they reached school grounds. Both schools are within the district.

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“You guys are destroying the educational environment,” said Mike Hernandez, principal of the nearby Oxnard Adult School.

Student leaders marching with the crowd pleaded with their peers to return to school, but were not persuasive. The protesters answered with a chant of “Hell no, we won’t go,” and quickly bolted to nearby Plaza Park, where they were surrounded by police and empty school buses.

School officials decided at the park that they could not take the students back to Rio Mesa High, because another, larger protest was possible.

“We decided at that point to take them to their bus stops,” Studt said.

Most protesters walked onto the buses without struggle, but a handful of students had to be pushed and dragged inside.

All the students who jumped the fence will probably be suspended from school or punished with detention, Studt said.

“We’ve (videotaped) those kids jumping over the fence,” Studt said, “and once we ID those kids, we’re going to take appropriate action.”

Christina Guerrera, one of the student leaders who pleaded with protesters to board the buses, was not concerned about getting in trouble for the march.

“They could put me in Juvenile Hall for all I care,” said Guerrera, 14, walking barefoot because her shoes were torn during the march. “I made my point.”

Miguel Bustillo is a Times staff writer and Maia Davis is a correspondent.

* RALLIES IN L.A.: B14