COLUMN ONE : In School, a Minority No Longer : On many California campuses, Asian Americans now predominate. The change is evidence of an ethnic group moving into the mainstream. But sometimes it’s whites who complain of being left out.

Arcadia High School bears its history on the wall of its main office, with three rows of photographs showing the fresh-scrubbed faces of 44 past student body presidents.

Black-and-white portraits of determined-looking, young white men reign in the first row. The all-boys club disbands in the second row as a white female arrives. At the end of the third row, the exclusively white leaders are joined by two Chinese American males, whose color photos allude to the sweeping demographic changes that have confronted this San Gabriel Valley campus.

“When I first saw the wall, it was intimidating because all I saw were pictures of Caucasians. Then, all of a sudden I saw the Asians, and it’s like, whoa! The change has finally happened and everyone can see it,” said Korean American senior Caroline Sim, this year’s student body president, whose picture soon will be displayed.

Just 15 years ago, nine of 10 students at Arcadia High were white; Asian Americans were just a smattering. Now, more than half of the students are of Asian descent; whites make up only a third of the student body.

A similar change has occurred at an increasing number of California public schools, resulting in hundreds of predominantly Asian American campuses in areas such as Fullerton, Garden Grove, Cerritos, South Pasadena, Torrance, Long Beach, Palos Verdes and across the San Gabriel Valley. This also is happening in Sacramento, Fresno, Cupertino and San Francisco.

“It’s a sign of Asians moving into the mainstream,” said Gary Orfield, a Harvard University professor who has studied Asian American population patterns. “It’s a dynamically growing community that’s already larger than the African American community in California. It’s bound to have a significant effect on the future of California’s schools.”

At schools now predominantly Asian American, the demographic shift has transformed campus life, sometimes boosting academics, prompting curriculum changes, inspiring students of Asian descent to assume more prominent roles and fueling the popularity of Asian clubs.

In Cerritos at Whitney High, for instance, 29 of this year’s 30 elected student officers are Asian American. The school offers Korean and Japanese language classes and students have organized a Vietnamese American Student Assn., a Chinese club, a Thai/Laotian Alliance, the Club Kaibigan for Filipino students, a Pardesi club for Indian students and even a Japanese honor society.

“Asian students feel really comfortable here, while white students kind of hang out by themselves,” said senior Susan Park, Whitney’s senior class president. “The roles are reversed here.”

But the changes also have sparked racial tension in many communities, with longtime residents resenting the way the arrival of large numbers of Asian American families alters area schools.

“A lot of the white population still sees Koreans as ‘them,’ ” said Phyllis Valla, PTA president at Sunny Hills High in Fullerton, which now enrolls more Asians--primarily Korean Americans--than whites. “What I’ve heard in the community are comments like, ‘I’ve paid taxes all these years, and I’m not going to let my kid go to Sunny Hills to be a minority.’ ”

In 1981, Asian Americans outnumbered all other ethnic groups at 77 California schools--13 in Los Angeles County and one in Orange County. That number has since grown to 367 campuses--85 in Los Angeles County and 30 in Orange County.

With projections that California’s Asian population--which is already the state’s fastest-growing group--will nearly triple by the year 2020, educators say it is only a matter of time before it will be common throughout the state to find schools in which students of Asian descent predominate.

The growth of the population in inner-city communities such as Los Angeles’ Koreatown and Chinatown is one reason the number of predominantly Asian schools has quadrupled since the early 1980s. But more established, affluent families of Asian descent also have been flocking in record numbers to some traditionally white suburbs, primarily because they want their children to attend elite schools there.

“Arcadia became a magnet for Asian families because they want to get their child in a premiere high school,” said Martin Plourde, Arcadia High’s principal.

Stellar reputations also have attracted Asian Americans to Sunny Hills, San Marino, Diamond Bar and Whitney high schools, and to other top academic schools such as University High in Irvine and Palos Verdes Peninsula High, where whites are still the majority but the numbers of students of Asian descent are increasing.

“The growth of the Asian community is very much going toward where the good schools are,” said UCLA professor Leo Estrada, who studies demographic trends and is a census advisor to the U.S. secretary of commerce. “Unlike Latinos, who tend to move to areas where they do business or work, the growth of the Asian community has nothing to do with where they do business. Asians go the route of finding the best public schools.”

Schools that are predominately Asian American range from elite, high-achieving campuses in affluent suburbs to poor, inner-city schools with high dropout rates and low achievement test scores.

“These days, we have all kinds of Asian kids--truant kids, dropouts, pregnant girls, gang members, high achievers, low achievers,” said Sally Chou, an assistant principal at Alhambra High. “There’s no such thing as a typical Asian kid. We’re part of the overall statistics.”

Some campuses bolster the “model minority” stereotype of Asian Americans with their long lists of National Merit scholars and graduates who attend Ivy League colleges.

At many suburban schools, the influx of students of Asian descent--which includes Pacific Islanders, Filipinos and Indians--appears to have boosted test scores and increased academic competition. Educators link this trend to the strong commitment that Asian American students tend to make to their studies.

But other schools, particularly those with large numbers of recent Southeast Asian immigrants, struggle to educate a mostly disadvantaged population of those with limited English skills and little support from home.

At San Francisco’s Galileo High, for instance, one of the biggest challenges is getting seniors to pass a required English composition test that simply asks them to write a paragraph on a given topic. “Our kids have an awful time with that,” Principal John Quinn said.

While Chinese Americans are the largest demographic group in many San Gabriel Valley schools and in the Bay Area, other Asian groups are gaining ground in different areas. Filipinos, for instance, have the largest numbers at some San Diego campuses, while Cambodians predominate in parts of Long Beach and Koreans make up the majority at some Los Angeles and Cerritos schools.

Once considered a minority within a minority at most California schools, students of Asian descent now set the tone on many campuses, dominating leadership roles, initiating activities and establishing new campus norms.

Consider Bolsa Grande High, a north Orange County campus educating a mostly indigent immigrant population.

During fall homecoming festivities, 26 school leaders, dressed in black tuxedos and top hats, paraded through the gym to kick off the annual lip-sync contest--the school’s most popular homecoming event.

As they danced and performed skits to the latest street beats, their classmates stomped their feet, whistled and cheered. No one seemed fazed that more than half of those strutting across the basketball court were of Asian descent, and that the bleachers also were dominated by rows of dark-haired Asian youths.

Bolsa Grande once educated mostly white students. All that changed after the 1975 fall of Saigon and the exodus of Vietnamese refugees to America, primarily to Orange County. Today, students of Asian descent make up 55% of the school’s population.

Last spring, the student representing Vietnam won the school’s Miss International cultural pageant, while another teenager of Vietnamese descent was named valedictorian. This year, seven out of eight elected student council representatives are of Asian descent.

“Asians set the tone, and everyone else has to adjust to that,” said Pete Frey, who has taught English at the school for 10 years.

Cerritos’ Whitney High is a nationally recognized gifted magnet school that admits only the top junior high and high school students from the ABC Unified School District. Despite the school’s efforts to maintain a diverse population, it’s enrollment is 74% Asian American, 16% white, 8% Latino and 2% black.

“I’m not sure if I would have the same confidence if I had gone to a school where Asians were a minority,” Park said. “I have Asian friends at other schools, and they don’t feel they can get involved. But here, it’s so comfortable for me to go out for everything.”

As part of the school’s International Day celebration, students set up booths around campus, enticing their classmates with foods from around the world. While Japanese students served teriyaki beef bowls, Chinese students sold homemade dumplings and Korean students prepared kim pap, a specialty made of rice and vegetables wrapped in seaweed.

Korean American senior Cristina Park, the school’s student body president, said Whitney students feel no qualms about displaying their Asian heritage, which is not always the case at other schools.

“People here bring kim pap for lunch,” said Park, who attended a Bellflower elementary school. “I can’t imagine bringing kim pap at my old school because people would say, ‘What’s that?’ and think you’re weird.”

But for white, black and Latino students, being part of the minority can sometimes be frustrating and isolating.

Brandi Petway, an African American eighth-grader, said she was irritated when she told her mostly Asian American classmates that her cousin spoke at the Million Man March in Washington. “People said, ‘What’s that?’ she said. “ . . . Sometimes, it’s easy to feel resentful because there’s a whole bunch of Asians and not a lot of anyone else.”

Whitney’s predominance of Asian American students has also been a sore point in the community. Several years ago, some parents and teachers complained that Whitney enrolled “too many Asians,” said Howard Kwon, a trustee with the ABC Unified School District.

The school changed its admission policy in 1992 to increase diversity by reserving 50 of 165 seventh-grade spots for underrepresented students who pass the school’s admission test but are not among the highest scorers. The policy quieted the controversy, but peeved many students of Asian descent, who generally must meet the highest standards to gain admittance.

“Because of affirmative action, they’re letting people in without the highest scores,” said Hetty Chang, a Chinese American senior. “Everyone is saying Whitney is not going to be No. 1 anymore.”

As in Cerritos, the changing demographics have stirred tensions in many communities, with schools playing host to the race-charged conflicts.

Last year, student council elections at Arcadia High touched off a wave of resentment after 21 of 22 elected positions went to Asian American students. Until recently, the school’s Associated Student Body, or student council, was predominantly white.

Bertina Yuen, vice president of the school’s student council, said students of Asian descent were accused of voting only for candidates with Asian last names. Months after the elections, bitterness persists.

“The elections made us feel bad because people felt that we weren’t being represented at our own school,” said senior Stephany Storey, who is white. “We all know one of our biggest problems is that there is a lot of hatred toward Asians on campus. The elections caused a lot of problems, but a lot of people are also resentful because Asians seclude themselves and speak other languages in front of us.”

Yuen, a Chinese American student who mixes in both white and Asian cliques, believes ignorance underlies most conflicts. “I used to hang out with a completely white crowd, and they knew nothing about Asians,” she said. “Now I hang out with more Asians and they don’t know anything about whites. Both sides completely misunderstand each other.”

During lunch at Sunny Hills High in Fullerton, students congregate by race, stationing themselves at different areas around the school’s courtyard. The divisions are even apparent when it comes to drawing students to different activities.

Last year, only a few Asian Americans attended the school’s all-night graduation party. Parent leader Myung Ja Choi said she questioned a few students of Korean descent about the poor turnout and they told her the party is considered “white kids’ stuff.”

The ethnic conflicts have grown particularly rancorous at Sunny Hills because the demographics have changed so dramatically over a relatively short period. In a decade, the white student population fell from 72% to 40%; the Asian American population rose to 51% from 20%.

“We feel less comfortable on campus because we feel outnumbered,” said senior Kim Jackson, who is white.

Sometimes even other students of Asian descent feel overwhelmed by the predominance of Koreans. “At this school, you’re either Korean or you’re white,” said senior Shilpa Gupta, who is East Indian.

As a sophomore, Gupta realized the power the majority group wields when she ran against a Korean student, who wrote some of her campaign signs in Korean.

“I was really hurt because it was her way of saying she was part of a group that I didn’t belong to,” said Gupta, who lost the election. “Whenever people run against a Korean, they think, ‘Oh, great, I’m never going to win.’ ”

Paul Ong, a UCLA professor of urban studies who has done extensive research on Asian Americans, said it is natural for racial tensions to emerge at school campuses where rapid and dramatic demographic changes have taken place.

“Asians are moving into areas with no history of minorities. This is bound to create conflicts,” he said. “But the question is, how are school administrators managing the situation? Are they being proactive and trying to work out the problems, or are they avoiding the issues?”

This year Sunny Hills was among 10 Orange County high schools participating in a program sponsored by the Orange County Human Relations Commission to reduce racial tension on campus. The schools held retreats, workshops and other events to try to resolve the ethnic conflicts.

Arcadia High also sponsored its first series of diversity summits. Plourde said he wants students, parents and others in the community to talk openly about the problems because Arcadia High, like many California campuses, is likely to grow even more diverse.

“We need to have an open conversation,” Plourde said. “Because if we ignore it, it’ll come back and bite you. We have to embrace this change.”

Tomorrow: The increasing number of Asian Americans is changing the UC system.

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New Campus Crowds

Asian students outnumbered other ethnic groups at 367 California schools by 1994, the latest year for which figures are available. The number of predominantly Asian schools was nearly five times higher than in 1981, when the total was 77. Number of schools where Asians predominate:

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1981 1994 Los Angeles 13 85 San Francisco 39 65 Santa Clara 0 53 Sacramento 2 34 Orange 1 30 San Mateo 9 21 Alameda 4 20 San Diego 9 20 San Joaquin 0 16 Fresno 0 9 Solano 0 7 Merced 0 3 Yuba 0 3 San Bernardino 0 1

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Source: California Department of Education

Researched by DIANE SEO/Los Angeles Times