Buena Park High Teaches Lesson in the 3 Rs: Resolve, Respect and Reconciliation

His first two years at Buena Park High School, Marcelino Vasquez just tried not to get in anyone’s way. Some days, the tension among students made him wish he’d stayed at home.

“Gangbangers, dude, fights, weapons, girls just as bad as boys,” he explained. “You had your Hispanics over there, your Asians here, your white dudes over there, and you didn’t mix, you know. You didn’t dare.”

That was two years ago. And now?

“Unbelievable,” the 17-year-old senior said. “You wouldn’t know it was the same school.”

Statistics bear him out. Two years ago, school officials at Buena Park High discovered through a student survey what they suspected: Nearly half the students responded that they did not feel safe in their own school.

So school officials got to work making changes at their racially mixed campus. They increased the number of student programs aimed at ethnic awareness and reducing teen tensions. They added training sessions for teachers and staff in how to deal with students with diverse backgrounds. They beefed up campus security, and began enforcing a dress code, which helps identify any nonstudents on campus.

One sign of the results: In that same student survey taken this year, the number of students who felt their school was safe jumped from 57% to 91%.

With that, Buena Park went from near the bottom to first in the Fullerton Union High School District on the safety question.

The first thing you see when you pull up to Buena Park High School--near Magnolia Avenue just north of the 91 Freeway--is a Buena Park city police car parked in front. That squad car, one staffer told me, goes a long way toward discouraging unwanted, trouble-seeking campus visitors.

Students say some problems still exist in the race relations arena. But of the two dozen students, teachers and officials I interviewed, all said the improvement has been dramatic.

“There are still places where you know not to go, people to avoid,” said Carissa Hall, a 14-year-old freshman. “But it’s not like it was before. No way.”

How could she know what it was like two years ago? She was in junior high.

“A lot of us had brothers or sisters, or friends here; everybody knew how bad it was,” she said. “None of us in junior high wanted to come here; we were afraid.”

Said physics teacher Myra Philpott: “I think what we’ve done is help empower the students to see their school in a much more positive image. They know now that gangs do not control this school.”

Philpott has been a part of that image building. She’s director of the school’s 3-year-old inter-ethnic council, which helps students deal with racial differences.

“We put 25 or so students together from all grade levels,” she said. “They usually don’t know each other. By the time a session is over, they’ve made 25 new friends. We can see the difference in attitudes even before the session has ended.”

Philpott also credits a program brought to campus two years ago by a new counselor, Janet Merget, in which students themselves mediate disputes between other students. The “disputants,” as the conflicting students are known, must come to terms and sign a binding contract.

“It can be anything from anger over rumors--boyfriend/girlfriend stuff--to racial disputes,” Merget said. “Usually we can get it resolved this way. Many of our disputants wind up becoming mediators later.”

While teachers and staff emphasized such communications programs, the students talked more about improved security--full-time Buena Park police officers hired through special grants.

“Two years ago, the cops here wouldn’t talk to you,” said Kirk Cavalier, a 16-year-old junior. “But now they’re really friendly. And if you’ve got a problem, they treat it seriously. That’s the biggest difference I see.”

There’s another difference, based on that student survey. Two years ago 65% of the students found their teachers satisfactory. That satisfactory rate is up to 85%.

“It takes a lot of factors to improve a school,” Philpott said.

Factors like reducing the kind of tension that Marcelino Vasquez says used to make him wish he could skip school some days.

I caught up with Marcelino as he was leaving school with two good friends, Henry Hanna, 18, and Larry Burfitt, 17. The three all smiled as they explained that two years ago, they would not have thought of spending time together away from classes--because of their ethnic backgrounds. Henry is Assyrian, Larry is Filipino and Vasquez is Latino.

“Now you can hang with anybody you want to kick back with,” Vasquez said. “That’s pretty cool.”

Jerry Hicks’ column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Readers may reach Hicks by calling the Times Orange County Edition at (714) 966-7823 or by fax to (714) 966-7711, or e-mail to jerry.hicks@latimes.com