U.S. Tells Compton Schools to Reduce Racial Harassment

The U.S. Department of Education has told the state-run Compton Unified School District to reduce racial discrimination and harassment faced by Latino and black students on campuses.

The agency’s Office for Civil Rights recently completed a two-year investigation into students’ and parents’ complaints about racist treatment from school staff on such issues as grades and discipline. As a result, the district has agreed, among other steps, to appoint an ombudsman to help document and resolve ethnic conflicts among Compton’s teachers, staff, parents and students.

The district, which was taken over by the state in 1993 after poor management led to insolvency, has agreed in recent months to much of the U.S. plan and has pledged to implement it during the next year. An unresolved matter, however, involves the teaching of English to the district’s 15,000 Spanish-speaking students, children of a new Latino majority in a city where African Americans used to predominate.

According to a letter from federal officials to Randolph Ward, the state-appointed administrator of Compton schools, the investigation looked into complaints that “school staff and administrators made racially disparaging remarks about students and/or treated students differently on the basis of race.”

The alleged discrimination included complaints involving disparate grading, discipline, dress code and attendance rules.

Although about 50% of the district’s 31,000 students speak Spanish when they enroll in school, the district’s program for teaching them English is failing, Compton officials conceded. Last month, federal officials rejected the district’s plan to improve the program for English learners, calling that proposal “internally inconsistent.”

Many of the racial tensions in the school mirror tensions within the larger community, district officials said. In 1990, 40% of Compton’s population was Latino, while 53% was black. Today, officials estimate the Latino population at between 65% and 70%, while the black population has dropped to about 30%.

“This community is changing, and in that change, adjustments have to be made, and adjustments are always difficult,” district spokesman Fausto Capobianco said. “It’s a supersensitive issue here.

“We take all these issues very seriously,” he said. “We are trying to reestablish the educational system down here. We are taking some giant strides, but we still have issues that have to be resolved.”

The Department of Education’s investigation is separate from a civil rights lawsuit filed in 1997 by the American Civil Liberties Union against the district over decrepit physical conditions and the lack of trained and credentialed teachers. That case was settled in March, with district officials vowing to improve physical conditions in schools and make an effort to hire more credentialed teachers.

But while the ACLU and Compton school officials declared that the troubled schools were back on track, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights urged the district to resolve complaints about racial incidents and the English-language program.

Settlements were reached between the district and the federal government in recent months, but those were not publicly discussed pending final resolution. After the first rejection, the district is trying to develop an alternative plan to teach English to Spanish speakers.

The federal probe also looked at parents’ allegations that “they were subject to hostile and discriminatory treatment by administrators and staff of different ethnicities at a number of schools in the district,” according to documents. Parents also alleged that female students were sexually harassed by male security guards at the high schools.

In many instances, district officials kept no records on the complaints against district staff, the number of racial incidents at schools or on how students were disciplined, the district spokesman said.

Federal officials said they did not want to discuss the cases in depth until they have reached an agreement on how to improve education for English-language learners.

“We don’t want to start publicly flogging the school district,” said Roger Murphy, spokesman for the Department of Education.

Ward, the state administrator running the school district, declined to comment, saying that Capobianco should speak for the district.

Officials from West Ed, the consulting organization working with the district to improve race relations, declined to comment.

Horacio Escorza, whose two children attend public elementary schools in Compton, said many Spanish-speaking parents have long felt disenfranchised by the school system.

“This problem has been going on for many years,” he said. “If you speak English, they listen to you. But if you don’t speak English, school officials don’t bother to do anything.”

To ease racial tensions on campuses, a soon-to-be-hired ombudsman will report regularly on the number of racial complaints and their resolution, Capobianco said. Administrators will keep records on how many students are disciplined and what their race or ethnicity is.

District officials have pledged to prepare educational and staff development programs in race relations, and work to get an ethnically diverse group of parents involved in schools.

Some students at Compton High School said they feel that the ethnic situation is improving there.

When Jorge Ruiz moved to Compton from Michoacan, Mexico, seven years ago, he said, he spoke only Spanish, and middle school was a daily agony of insults from fellow students. “Other students would call me ‘wetback’ and ‘stupid Mexican,’ ” said Ruiz, who is Compton High School’s valedictorian this year. “But some of them were Mexican too.”

Now, he said, people get along better as Latino and African American students realize that gangs cause more problems than race.