4 Compton Schools Fail Inspections

Four Compton schools flunked a state inspection of their facilities and safety, a serious setback after recent signs of academic and management progress in the state-run district.

The daylong inspection, conducted last week, found locked bathrooms, poor electrical wiring and broken windows at Compton High, Whaley Middle, Anderson Elementary and Roosevelt Elementary schools. A state team of crisis managers--who last month had cited gains in facilities and recommended a return of the district to local control--led the inspection.

The results, while troubling, will not change the state’s plans to end its seven-year takeover of the Compton schools and return control in phases to the local school board, the head of the state team said. But the inspection’s findings could create at least two new controversies for Compton’s schools during the transition to local control.

An angry Randolph E. Ward, the district’s state-appointed administrator, said Thursday that he will replace all district maintenance workers with a private company if the schools don’t perform better during a follow-up inspection in December. And the American Civil Liberties Union--which is monitoring the Compton schools under a consent decree filed with a federal court in March--threatens to ask a federal judge to hold the school district in contempt if school conditions don’t improve by the end of the year.

The inspection was a surprise to all the schools but Compton High, which was notified ahead of time. The state team was accompanied on its rounds by two lawyers representing the ACLU, an official from the state Department of Finance and a contractor who inspects schools for the district.

The contractor--which grades the district’s schools on safety and sanitation and posts the marks on their front doors--is expected to lower the marks for all four schools. Compton High, Whaley Middle and Roosevelt Elementary probably will receive Fs, officials said. Anderson Elementary will get a D.

“The results of the inspection were not favorable,” wrote Tom Henry, the leader of the state team, in a letter to Ward, which was obtained by The Times. “The most troubling findings included serious health and safety issues.”

Chief among those issues was the condition of school bathrooms. Although inspectors noted less graffiti and trash than in earlier visits, they found many of the bathrooms locked during school hours--a violation of state policy and the ACLU consent decree. Some lacked toilet paper or soap; others had broken mirrors. “A few smelled pretty bad too,” Henry said.

The rest of the concerns ran the gamut. The storage rooms at Compton High are in disarray, and its emergency exits lack plain markings. At Anderson Elementary, several outdoor lights were broken. Required maintenance logs were not being kept at Whaley Middle and some of the other schools. At Roosevelt, a box of electrical circuits had been broken open.

Worried that children might put their hands in the circuit box, Robert M. Myers, an attorney working with the ACLU, grabbed some heavy-duty tape from the school office and used it to seal the box.

“With a toolbox, we could have fixed a lot of the things we saw ourselves,” Myers said. “It seemed like the schools were simply ignoring things.”

Though harsh in their criticisms, Myers and Henry noted some progress. They said the four schools have consistently scored poorly in state inspections and that they have shown substantial improvements over the last several years.

Both said they were particularly impressed by the number of textbooks and the quality of lessons in the classrooms they visited. One state official wrote the district to say: “The classrooms now are alive with learning, whereas before so many were dead zones.”

“I’m not going to overreact--one visit isn’t going to overshadow the great improvements that these schools and others have made,” Henry said. Added Myers: “The schools are better, and the district is heading in the right direction.”

Ward put the onus on the 160-plus plant workers for such problems. After learning of the inspection results, Ward said he asked district lawyers to examine the possibility of hiring a private company to replace these workers.

“What we expect is 100% implementation” of improvements required by the state and the ACLU consent decree, Ward said.

Michael Moore of the American Federation of Teachers, which represents the district’s plant workers, blamed the problems on cutbacks and said the union will oppose privatization of work.