Learning the Hard Way : Education: Many know Leuzinger High in Lawndale as a weed-strewn campus plagued by racial violence. But that reputation masks the accomplishments of students who excel there.

It was Cinco de Mayo at Leuzinger High School in Lawndale. Everybody expected the worst.

That morning, students were greeted at the gates by security guards passing metal detectors over their backpacks. By lunchtime, 10 black-and-whites were patrolling the campus border. A news helicopter thumped overhead while two other television news crews clamored outside the school’s gates.

The guards, the police officers and the reporters all expected the celebration of Cinco de Mayo to touch off yet another fight between black and Latino students.

This time, however, they found only peace.

“The majority of our youngsters are going about their business trying to get an education . . . and yet the school and all of the children get labeled in this negative way,” fumed Principal Sonja Davis. “It’s infuriating.”

The labels come all too easily at this barren, sprawling South Bay campus, overgrown with weeds, where school officials grease the tops of gates not so much to keep intruders out as to keep unruly students in. Since September, sheriff’s deputies have raced to the school’s perimeter three times to stop fights between black and Latino students.

So far this school year, administrators have processed more than 650 suspensions and 27 expulsions. Students regularly defy school rules prohibiting profanity, the possession of beepers and the baring of midriffs. Test scores are abysmally low.

Still, flowers grow among the weeds at Leuzinger High. Amid the chaos and fading buildings that resemble Army barracks, students write poetry, create art, organize dances, do their homework--even earn straight-A averages. While one-quarter of the school’s ninth- through 12th-graders are functioning below their grade levels, about 20% will attend college. And some students, like Roberto Saldana, are headed for universities.

Roberto, a 17-year-old senior who currently is enrolled in advanced placement calculus and English, will attend USC this fall on a full scholarship. He has managed to keep his grades up while playing varsity football and baseball. He also draws.

The school’s problems, he said, sometimes make it difficult to stay focused on classwork.

“You get distracted,” he said. “You get worried about your friends.”

On one afternoon in March, several student brawls erupted after school officials dismissed classes early in an ill-fated attempt to defuse tensions between black and Latino students. Sheriff’s deputies and Hawthorne police officers arrested nearly three dozen students, including four who allegedly attacked two female police officers.

Last October, a demonstration against Proposition 187, the anti-illegal immigrant initiative, sparked fights among Latino and black students. And the month before, gang fights erupted outside the school the day after a 19-year-old former student and gang member was shot to death near the campus.

The racial tensions that touched off the student fights often stemmed from gang rivalries, school officials said. About 100 students affiliated with 10 or more rival gangs attend the school.

“What’s happening is there are Latino gang members in the community, some of whom attend Leuzinger High School, who have gang fights with other gang members, who happen to be black,” said David Brown, deputy director of Community Youth Gang Services, the county’s gang prevention program. “In the heat of the moment, the passion of the dispute spills over and . . . race is a card that is most easily used as a point of alliance.”

Melissa Banales, an A student who writes poetry and is a member of the student council and drill team, recently went to Yukon Intermediate School to introduce eighth-graders to the high school’s clubs and activities. She said she became deeply upset when one of the students described Leuzinger as “the riot school.”

“It hurt me because I don’t want them to think that about us,” said Banales. “Here we are the good students and they were probably thinking we were in the riots.”

The racial tensions that surfaced during the fights have not been confined to the high school, where more than half the students are Latino, 30% are black and 85% of their teachers are white. In recent years, the Centinela Valley Union High School District has paid more than $650,000 to settle racial discrimination suits filed by black employees who claimed there was a racially hostile environment within the district.

Teachers and administrators eventually underwent sensitivity training. But the litigation nearly bankrupted the district, and two years ago administrators began trimming the hours of janitors, groundskeepers and security guards to balance the books.

An independent auditor is investigating allegations that district administrators may have committed fraud or embezzled funds. And trustee Ruth Morales has announced that she believes unnamed fellow trustees may have tried to cover up criminal activities.

The cutbacks and district turmoil have taken a toll at Leuzinger, where trash cans are overflowing and teachers complain that they no longer feel safe.

School officials nevertheless have managed to start two programs aimed at resolving conflicts among students. Last year, mediators brought together about 60 rival gang members and encouraged them to declare a truce. About 20 students who participated in the peace workshop received free tickets to a professional basketball game.

A peer mediation program available to all students since January has also helped ease campus tensions.

So far, more than 25 pairs of combatants have appeared before student mediators to learn how to resolve their differences without using their fists.

In one recent session, two ninth-grade boys who had tangled on the basketball court told their versions of how they almost came to blows.

Toby, a small-framed white boy, claimed that Anthony, a tall, lanky black boy with one arm in a cast, had fouled him too aggressively on the court. Anthony, who at first denied but then admitted he threw a basketball at Toby’s back, said he was angry because Toby was using “bad language.”

Both boys agreed that Anthony’s friends had threatened to beat up Toby, but Anthony said he told his friends to lay off Toby because “he’s too little, he’s not even a fight.”

After establishing the facts of the dispute and expressing sympathy with both sides, the mediators--both seniors--asked the boys to apologize to each other. They also had the two sign a contract stating that they agree to “respect each other on the court.”

The session ended 15 minutes later with the two boys shaking hands.

Many teachers and parents say Leuzinger’s behavior problems stem from a lack of discipline.

On a recent visit to the school, a group of 10th-grade students played a rollicking game of cards during their English class under the gaze of a substitute teacher who admitted, “I can’t control them.”

Parent Chris Johnson, who has been observing the campus daily since the last outbreak of fighting, said she has seen students gambling with dice, and boys “just about literally having sex with girls behind the bushes.”

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While school rules call for the suspension of any student found to possess drugs, alcohol or cigarettes, a teen-age boy who entered campus with a pack of Marlboros sticking out of a pocket was simply forced to give them up to a security guard.

“There’s no bottom line here,” complained computer science teacher Troy Winslow. “If you don’t do what you’re supposed to do, what’s going to happen to you? Nothing.”

Davis, the principal, denies she and other administrators are lax in enforcing school rules. In the past few months, she said, she has taken several steps to crack down on troublemakers.

In addition to greasing the tops of the gates that surround the school’s entrance, Davis recently installed a hot line in her office for use in emergencies. Only Hawthorne police and the Lennox sheriff’s station have the phone number, she said. Students are also periodically subjected to random searches of backpacks.

Davis also has applied for state gang intervention funds to help pay for a program that provides students with wholesome alternatives to gang activities. And she is hoping to start a program that would confine troubled students to a single classroom headed by a specially trained teacher.

Some teachers believe such programs are misguided because they keep disruptive students at the school rather than at the district’s continuation campus. One teacher, who asked not to be identified, said that 15 to 20 of the school’s rowdiest students don’t even reside within district boundaries.

“We allow them in,” he said, “and when they cause problems, we don’t get rid of them.”

Yet the majority of the school’s 2,800 students somehow manage to attend class and follow the rules.

During one lunchtime break, Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps students practiced marching near the football field while student council members hosted a fund-raiser in the senior quad.

Later, about 60 students and teachers gathered in the music room to listen to students recite Spanish poetry. In the auditorium across a walkway, other students staged a modern dance concert.

In classrooms ranging from chemistry to ceramics, students appeared orderly and ready to work.

About 20 students sat quietly in a beginning ceramics class while teacher Brian Yoshii called roll. When he finished, they pulled their ceramics projects out of the cupboards and returned to their tables to work. When told there were only five minutes left before the dismissal bell, they put their projects away and mopped up the tables and floors.

When they left, Yoshii looked at the spotless room and smiled.

“Our reputation is so bad, I want people to see something good,” he said. “We have good kids here. Just look at these floors. You can eat off them, they’re so clean.”