Beverly Hills High May Scrap Diversity Effort

A tiny integration program quietly created 31 years ago to introduce white Beverly Hills teenagers to youngsters with black and brown faces is about to fade away with a similar lack of fanfare.

School officials have been told their do-it-yourself diversity effort at Beverly Hills High School should be abolished because it violates state law.

The Beverly Hills school board will meet Tuesday night at the high school to decide whether to scrap the program or try to restructure it so it does not run afoul of Proposition 209.

That 1996 statewide initiative banned state and local affirmative action programs in public education. A school district lawyer has warned officials that the measure also bans voluntary multicultural enrollment programs.

This year 117 of the high school’s 2,130 pupils are African American, Asian American or Latino youngsters recruited from 11 Westside middle schools operated by the Los Angeles Unified School District.

The program was started in 1969 by the Beverly Hills school system’s first black teacher, Lyle Suter. He retired as head of the high school art department in 1988.

“It’s a real shame that this may end,” said Wanda Greene-Hill, who has experienced the program as both a student and a parent.

Greene-Hill, who lives in Baldwin Hills, was a member of the first group in 1969. She said enrolling at the all-white campus was a life-changing experience for a girl who at the time was growing up in the Adams District in the shadow of downtown Los Angeles.

She met the man she would eventually marry, Maurice Hill, at the high school and enrolled in college-prep classes that later qualified her for admission to USC. These days, their 16-year-old daughter attends Beverly Hills High through the same program and their 13-year-old son has planned to enroll there too.

Earlier this month it seemed that 16-year-old Erin Hill would be forced to transfer to a new school for her senior year because of the program’s termination. But officials now say she and the program’s other 116 teenagers will be allowed to graduate.

The fate of 13-year-old Christopher Hill’s dream of starting high school there this fall is uncertain, however. In the past, younger brothers and sisters of those in the program have been encouraged to apply.

Greene-Hill said she learned the program was in jeopardy three weeks ago when she sought an enrollment application form for her son. “I was told the program had been disbanded and was not being renewed. They were planning March 31 to kick everyone out,” she said.

But Board of Education President William Brien quickly offered reassurances that would not happen.

“We want to be fair to kids who have an expectation to finish school here,” Brien said. “We’re not going to punish children who came to the program legitimately.”

Parents say they have heard varying explanations for the program’s demise.

One suggestion was that the program was accidentally caught up in a crackdown on outsiders who illegally enroll their children at Beverly Hills High through the use of phony addresses.

Another was that school board members were reacting to complaints from Beverly Hills parents that teenagers in the program were getting spots on sports teams, in drama productions and on the student council that otherwise would have gone to local youngsters.

Officials cite the district lawyer’s interpretation of Proposition 209 as the reason, but some parents disagree.

“We’re in the process of proving the program’s not a violation of Proposition 209,” said parent Darrell Smith, whose 22-year-old son Dion--now a senior at Claremont-McKenna College--is an alumnus of the program. Another son, Daimar, 15, is a 10th-grader at Beverly Hills High.

Parents also hope to convince school board members Tuesday that the presence of minority youngsters at the school “is not a take-away from Beverly Hills, but is a plus,” said Smith, a View Park resident who owns an executive search firm.

School district administrators say they have been believers in that for 31 years.

“The idea was to bring ethnic diversity to the school and it was a wonderful program,” said Diane Dawson, the district’s assistant superintendent. “It’s been a very valuable and highly successful program. The participants have been some of our brightest students--some of our best kids and highest achievers.

“My personal opinion is, the program is still needed. In the real world we have many different cultures. I think our high school should reflect that. That idea is not out of date.”

Board of education member Barry Brucker said Beverly Hills has changed since the 1960s, however.

“Beverly Hills is blessed with a very diverse, multicultural population. We’re an international city,” Brucker said. “We are a multicultural school district. The city is really a United Nations of adults and children.”

Brucker said he doubts the school board will try to skirt the law by attempting to “wiggle around” Proposition 209. “The sense of the board is to comply with the law of the land and look out for the best interest of the children,” he said.

That may mean allowing younger siblings of teenagers now in the program to participate before it is completely shut down, he said.

That will be a relief to parents like Crenshaw district resident Gail Hill and Mid-Wilshire resident Melinda Weathersby, both of whom have high school students in the program and junior high pupils who want to get in.

But talk of scrapping the program has been unsettling to those with the most to gain--or lose--from the controversy.

“Everybody tells us they want diversity, but they’re trying to kick us out,” said Greene-Hill’s daughter Erin.

“We don’t understand. We thought times had changed. But they haven’t.”