Students at 3 High Schools Stage Prop. 227 Protests

Students at three Oxnard-area high schools skipped classes Friday for a lesson in civil disobedience.

In the most visible local protest of Tuesday’s passage of Proposition 227, about 60 angry Channel Islands High students walked three miles to a downtown park, where they waved Mexican and American flags and chanted slogans against the elimination of bilingual education.

Students said the march began after administrators attempted to halt a campus demonstration involving more than 100 teens and suspended a boy waving a banner.

“I’m just trying to get across the point that bilingual education does work,” said sophomore Carmen Gamez at Plaza Park. She emigrated from Mexico at age 6 unable to speak English. “Without bilingual education I still wouldn’t have learned English . . . I wouldn’t be in college-preparatory classes.”

Meanwhile, in the day’s largest demonstration, more than 250 students held a rally at Rio Mesa High inside the school’s cafeteria. At Hueneme High School, another 70 students held a protest on campus; a handful walked off school grounds.

The demonstrations were among several that have occurred in the last two days in Southern California cities. Administrators had headed off a protest at Hueneme High on Thursday and on Friday about 250 Belmont High students trooped down to Los Angeles City Hall for a noon rally.

Channel Islands High students prepared to return to school after gathering at Plaza Park, but were told to stay away by some of the dozen police shadowing them. School officials suspended the students for the rest of the day and left some worrying about other possible repercussions, such as being banned from graduation exercises. At least one school official toting a video camera accompanied police.

Supt. Bill Studt, who heads Oxnard Union High School District where the three schools are located, said students who participated in the walkouts would be disciplined.

“They will all be considered truants,” he said at an impromptu news conference at Rio Mesa. “There was nothing we could do to stop them.

“Walking off school and ditching classes doesn’t change what happened,” he said. “The proposition passed.”

However, Charles Weis, Ventura County superintendent of schools, noted that the proposition did not pass in Oxnard, Fillmore or Santa Paula. The three cities have the county’s highest proportion of Latino residents.

“What this proposition was, was people voting for other people’s children’s education,” he said. “If anything, I hope these students learn that if they want to affect their future they need to get registered, get involved with campaigning and get out and vote.”

At Channel Islands High, police used loudspeakers in a futile effort to persuade all students to remain on campus, and then followed those who continued demonstrating to downtown’s Plaza Park. Sgt. Ron Whitney said police wanted to ensure that students did not commit vandalism and were not hit by cars.

“They’ve been a great crowd, there’s been no problems,” Whitney said as several police officers peered through binoculars from a nearby parking lot at the demonstrators. “The only thing they’ve done is be truant from school.”

Indeed, some students studiously observed the letter of the law by picking up litter in the park.

Meanwhile, watchers were watching the watchers at the demonstration. Several attorneys from the Mexican-American Bar Assn. of Ventura County said they observed the rally to ensure that police allowed students to exercise their 1st Amendment rights.

Attorney Michael Rodriguez was incensed that the school provided no opportunity for students to discuss what is an emotional issue in predominantly Latino communities.

“They’re reacting, they’re not being proactive,” he said of district administrators. “All these students were suspended for expressing their 1st Amendment rights. . . . Who are the adults here? The adults seem to be acting on a lower plane than the students.”

Things were different at Rio Mesa, where administrators allowed a rally after hearing that students had planned to leave campus to demonstrate at a nearby park.

“They wanted a forum, so we provided a forum,” Studt said.

But the Channel Islands High students at Plaza Park seemed to relish the wider audience. Several motorists honked their approval as students paraded around the park--”That’s my mom,” said freshman Luis Angel Marin at the sound of one beep. And Gamez proudly introduced reporters to her 70-year-old grandmother, who had turned up to support the students.

An annoyed local businesswoman also stopped by to criticize district officials.

“There should be someone here from the school district protecting the rights of these children,” said Nina Duarte. “So what if they walked out of school. It’s up to the school district to make sure their safety is a priority, not to harass them, not to suspend them.”

Bilingual education isn’t expected to disappear from Ventura County schools despite the measure’s passage, Weis said.

The initiative’s language requires school district officials to provide such an education if a certain number of parents specifically request it for their children, he said.

Moreover, the issue is likely to be decided in the courts, since federal courts have generally upheld the right of children to receive bilingual education.