Principal Says New Jordan to Greet South Gate Transfers : Watts School Improved in Effort to Ease Fears of Reluctant New Students

When the school buses roll on Tuesday, his first day of high school, Fernando Gonzalez says he will feel more than the usual jitters.

His best friends will be going to South Gate High School, but Fernando will board a bus for another campus--David Starr Jordan High School in nearby Watts.

“I’m worried about how I will fit in,” said Fernando, 14, who has lived with his family in South Gate for 10 years. “I don’t have anything against Jordan. But my friends have been making fun of me. And I’m concerned about the area it’s in. I’m probably the only guy on my block going there. So I’m not too happy about it.”

Fernando will be separated from his friends because of a boundary change adopted by the Los Angeles school board in May. The boundary change will affect 97 ninth-graders and any new residents living on the west side of South Gate between Long Beach Boulevard and Alameda Street.

Those students have been permanently assigned to Jordan to relieve overcrowding at year-round South Gate High School. The shift in students will also help solve a problem at Jordan, which for years has had several hundred empty classroom seats.

Revitalization Effort

Since the board decided to alter the boundary line, the district has been busy revitalizing the Watts campus. Jordan will acquire an entire ninth grade this fall, becoming a four-year high school for the first time in its 60-year existence. Besides gaining students from South Gate, it is taking on 400 ninth-graders from Markham Junior High School, also in Watts.

The reorganization means that Jordan, growing from last year’s enrollment of 1,100 to this year’s projected 1,600, will not have empty classrooms this year. (Its capacity is 1,746 on a traditional school calendar.)

In addition, more rigorous courses will be offered and $2.2 million worth of physical improvements are under way.

According to longtime supporters of Jordan, the district’s efforts have brought a new spirit to a school that, they say, has been neglected for too long.

“Jordan was always the stepchild of the district,” said parent volunteer Helen Teate, who is president of the Jordan Parent-Teacher-Student Assn. “This year, it’s Cinderella. It’s going to be a very exciting year.”

But those changes have not eased the fears of South Gate parents, community leaders and officials. Their protests, which they have continued to voice in rallies and meetings during the summer, have centered on two issues: safety and academic quality. According to results of standardized state achievement tests, Jordan is one of the lowest-ranked high schools in the Los Angeles school district. And, because of its proximity to four housing projects, it suffers from an image of being crime-ridden.

Because the dispute involves the predominantly Latino South Gate community and the predominantly black Watts community, it has produced racial overtones, although South Gate parents have vigorously denied that racism is a factor in their protest.

Ada Montare, a conciliation specialist with the Department of Justice in San Francisco, which monitors situations with such racial implications, has been trying to find ways to ease the tension.

Injured Feelings

“There is conflict, hostility and injured feelings there,” Montare said. “I have been trying to tell parents in South Gate to look at it as an educational issue . . . and how, by participating in Jordan, they can ensure that their children will benefit. There are innovative programs planned for Jordan in the fall that will benefit anyone who goes there.”

Montare, however, is not sure that her efforts have been successful. Many South Gate parents say they have not changed their minds. “They’ll really have to prove it to me” that Jordan is safe and academically sound, said parent Maria Morales, who is organizing a protest march in front of South Gate High School on Tuesday. “Jordan has low test scores and a dangerous environment. I’ll be darned if I’ll let my child go.”

Said Amelia McBride, a member of the South Gate Anti-Boundary Change Committee: “The parents I know still say they’re not going to” send their students to Jordan. “They feel as strongly as they did before.”

Many angry parents have threatened to move out of South Gate, send their children to private school, teach them at home or board them with relatives in other communities where they could attend school. District authorities say they have no way of knowing how many have done so. But only a handful of South Gate parents attended Jordan orientation meetings held during the summer, school administrators said.

Originally, the school district identified 147 ninth-graders in the boundary-change area who would be sent to Jordan. But during the summer 50 of those students have been granted special sibling permits allowing them to enroll at South Gate because they have older brothers or sisters there. That leaves 97 students, plus any new residents, who may enroll at Jordan from South Gate.

Accustomed to Challenges

Jordan’s new principal said she hopes they all come.

Odaris Jordan is not unfamiliar with the challenges posed by her new assignment. She began her teaching career at Jordan in 1972 and also taught next door at Simon Rodia Continuation High School. She spent the last six years as principal of Metropolitan Continuation High School in downtown Los Angeles.

When she became Jordan’s principal in February, the controversy over the boundary change was raging and, she readily concedes, “It was not an easy place to be.” After meetings with concerned South Gate parents during the summer, she said, she is aware that the resistance to Jordan has not diminished.

But, as she outlined the new programs and other changes that will be in place at Jordan on opening day or soon after, she said she believes that the parents’ opposition eventually will disappear.

“It’s the kids who suffer because of their resistance,” she said. “But I believe time will prove the boundary change was a good thing to do, and they will send their youngsters here.

“I realize the constraints. I wish that everything would be perfect on the first day of school. But Jordan’s time has come and nothing is going to stop it from being all that it can be.”

Here are some of the improvements in store for Jordan this fall:

- Campus security will be stepped up with the aid of the Jordan Parent-Teacher-Student Assn. (PTSA). PTSA president Teate said a newly formed parent safety patrol will be highly visible on school grounds and in the hallways. The parents, who will wear identifying yellow jackets, “will let the students know we are here for their safety.”

The school, which will add 18 new teachers this year, will be fully staffed with qualified, full-time teachers for the second year in a row. Although this may not sound like an exciting achievement for most schools, it is for the 55 inner-city campuses, including Jordan, that the Los Angeles school district has identified as “hard to staff.”

Because of a chronic shortage of permanent instructors in years past, Jordan had to fill many vacancies with substitute teachers. But this year, “the kids will know who their teachers are from the first day of school,” Principal Jordan said. “They’ll have that consistency that they didn’t have with substitutes. That’s exciting.”

- Two Latino assistant principals have been hired, as well as a bilingual counselor and attendance clerk. A search is on for more bilingual aides, Jordan said.

- The school will offer advanced-placement courses in English, composition, calculus and history, as well as computer-assisted drafting and word-processing courses.

- A new computer lab has been outfitted with 30 new Apple computers and six printers, part of the district’s $10-million Computer Foundation Program.

- As part of an effort to “emphasize going to college and giving support to complete college,” Jordan said, the school will introduce a program called the College Core Curriculum. Open to academically gifted ninth- and 10th-grade students, the program will offer enriched courses with heavier workloads to prepare students for the demands of college study.

Jordan said she also is trying to increase opportunities for students who may not be college-bound. One of her goals this year is to help ninth-graders interested in vocational and technical studies take classes at Jordan-Locke Adult School, which operates on the Jordan campus.

She is also looking for ways to involve alumni and the business community in Jordan’s revitalization. Thus far, her efforts have resulted in an arrangement with Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena to provide a student internship, and a local supermarket has agreed to sponsor a “student of the month” award.

She also has spearheaded a campaign to sell season tickets for athletic events to school alumni, which she hopes will boost an admittedly sagging athletic program and enrich the student-body treasury. Season-ticket buyers have been asked to donate the tickets to the school if they do not plan to use them. Those tickets will be used as awards for students who improve their grades or have a perfect attendance record, Jordan said.

New Paint

To spruce up the campus, district funds have been allocated to paint the exterior of all the school buildings, build a soccer field and tennis courts, resurface the asphalt grounds and replace the tiles in the boys’ gym. In addition, plans have been drawn up to give the front of the school a face lift: It will be entirely re-landscaped and enclosed with a wrought-iron fence.

Work on these projects, Jordan said, will begin during the school year or next summer.

The principal said she hopes South Gate students will come to judge the school for themselves. But if only a few show up on Tuesday, she said, she will not be discouraged.

“I know that anything that happens here could be blown out of proportion. I’ve been walking on eggshells since I got here. But I can’t use my energy to worry about that.

“I believe that once a few students from South Gate come, they will do a lot more than we can do to dispel the myths,” she said. “When the folks out there realize we do care, it will be contagious. . . . Then they’re going to be asking to come to Jordan.”