Muir High Officials Try to Polish Up a Tarnished Image : Education: A shooting and stabbing have altered perceptions of the school. Administrators counter with heightened security.

At a quarter past noon on a recent Friday, about 30 Bloods street gang members are on the move near John P. Muir High School in Northwest Pasadena.

They walk briskly in pairs--their eyes set dead-ahead, their footsteps in an unintended sync. After slipping under a fence along Casitas Avenue, they head toward the campus core, flashing their signs and goading rivals.

Suddenly, the scene is defused; scrambling school security guards herd the gang toward an awaiting phalanx of police. The youths are cited, five adults are arrested--and the security guards are jubilant. “They didn’t get in!” guard Timothy McDermott beams to colleagues. “They didn’t get in!”

Such turf wars are ongoing at Muir High. In a school year that’s seen serious campus-related violence, authorities have recently begun an intensive effort to keep disruptions to a minimum--a push, students and teachers say, that’s working.

But another struggle, many at Muir agree, is much harder to win. It’s about altering perceptions of a school where the year’s events have included a shooting, a stabbing and a mass student walkout. In the insular fishbowl of high school, where rivalries and reputations are king, such incidents have given the storied old campus along bustling Lincoln Avenue a whopping image problem.

“Our location does create a problem for us,” said Principal Sterling Williams, striding past smiling portraits of Muir alumni Jackie Robinson and John Van de Kamp. “We are readily accessible to students who are dropouts, whatever.”

But Williams is quick to add that many of Muir’s approximately 1,500 students are notable for “monumental positive things.”

Myles Fowlis, a Pasadena district police officer who patrols the campus fringes, agreed that Muir has received an unfair rap.

“Most of the kids are just going to school,” he said. “Then you’ve got a percentage of them that . . . gets all the press. [But] you’re looking at a huge campus--lots of places to hide, lots of places to screw around.”

With the zeal of boosters, many students, teachers and administrators at Muir implore visitors to survey their sprawling 49-acre campus and see the unsung triumphs of everyday student life: improving test scores, spirited mural projects and a recent performance of “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown.” Muir, they stress, is simply a good school at the intersection of a troubled place and time.

“Muir is probably a touchstone of society,” said English teacher Julia Owens-Rice. Acknowledging a difficult year, she said Muir’s problems have been compounded by an exaggerated view some have of daily campus life. “It would be gladiatorial combat if you believed some people,” she said.

Muir’s current academic year has had its volatile moments:

* An Oct. 12 student walkout to protest class size and campus violence.

* The Feb. 14 stabbing of a 17-year-old student who suffered a punctured lung during a fight near a gymnasium.

* The Feb. 16 shooting of 20-year-old Margarito Reynozo. The alleged assailant is a 15-year-old Muir student who is on trial.

It’s not as if Muir High stands alone with problems. During the academic year, Pasadena Unified School District police have quelled 60 fights and caught 34 trespassers at the district’s four high schools, according to records (the officers don’t keep statistics for individual schools).

Still, several Muir students say the two violent incidents in late winter seemed to taint their school. Its fence-ringed campus, which long ago saw its arching entryway sealed to keep away troublemakers, seemed to become more dangerous overnight.

“Seven little Crips control the mind-set of what people think of our school,” lamented student Dustin Johnson about the campus troublemakers.

Student Armine Chaparyan, who counsels local youths, said they began asking her: “Tell me Muir isn’t as bad as it seems,” she said.

In response to the violence, district officials doubled the school security force by shifting funds to hire five additional guards at Muir. The guards launched the more aggressive effort to keep troublemakers outside the gates.

Districtwide, a telephone “weapons hot line” was installed to alert police. And security guards on May 1 began using metal detectors at the high schools, as well as the district’s four middle schools.

While crediting the moves for helping foster calm, Pasadena schools Police Chief Jarado Blue said that funding for Muir’s additional guards is uncertain past June. “Resources are limited,” Blue said. “Every time I get a new policeman, that’s a few less books [in schools].”

While generally praising the new guards, some at Muir say their presence fell into a “school under siege” story line that’s false.

“It all comes down to perception,” said senior Truc Luu, 17. “We’ve had teachers who’ve taught [at the school] for 20 years and said it’s always been like this.”

Sharon Gilchrist, a 1961 graduate who has long taught English at Muir, believes that the image problem runs deeper. The school’s multiethnic student body--which is 50% African American, 35% Latino and 12.7% white--is hobbled by community prejudices, she said.

“We have fought for so many years [the perception that] just because it’s the Northwest side, your kid can’t be getting a good education,” Gilchrist said. “Most [Muir students] are very serious about an education. I don’t know how you change mind-sets.”

Successes abound at the school, principal Williams said. He points to Muir’s GeoSpace Academy, which prepares students for careers in science, its award-winning band and its various accelerated magnet programs. And he hopes for quiet passage to June.

“Muir has been a unique school for years,” Gilchrist said. “We just keep going, in spite of.”