Jordan High School

Students and fellow educators are rallying behind a fired Jordan High School teacher they say was sacked for encouraging political activism among her students. About 60 students rallied Wednesday at the Watts campus, while a colleague of the fired teacher said he and 15 other instructors planned to resign or transfer to other schools to protest the dismissal of Karen Salazar, a second-year English teacher. The dust-up has gone digital as well.

Schools Supt. David Brewer has sided with Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa in a dispute over whether the mayor's school-reform effort was approved at Jordan High in Watts. The results of voting by Jordan teachers were in limbo pending an interpretation of election rules. More teachers had voted with the mayor -- a win for the mayor by one reading of the printed election rules. But the numbers were less than a majority of all bargaining-unit members.

Jordan High in Watts will sit out the mayor's school reform effort -- at least for one year -- creating complications and disappointment for Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. Wednesday's decision reverses previous announcements from the mayor and the Los Angeles Unified School District, which gave seven schools the opportunity last week to decide whether to join Villaraigosa's Partnership for Los Angeles Schools.

IN his first year as principal of Jordan High School in Watts, Stephen Strachan ordered 743 suspensions -- 600 more than the principal the year before -- to punish students for fighting, defying authority, defacing the campus and disrupting classes. His second year, he suspended students 596 times. Strachan lost 30 teachers -- almost one-third of his staff -- to other schools and different jobs at the end of that first year, and 16 more the next.

Los Angeles Jordan and Verbum Dei high schools both are located in Watts, separated by only one mile -- and two notorious gangs. Security concerns are the prime reason the schools haven't met on a football field in 10 years -- a span that will end today at 2 p.m. in a season opener at Lawndale High. "It's a beautiful thing," Verbum Dei Coach Kendric Knox said. The teams got together for dinner last week at the Watts Coffee House, an idea hatched by Elijah Asante, Jordan's first-year coach.

The Jordan Downs housing project is one of Los Angeles' most dangerous and blighted communities, with a high crime rate and residents too poor to purchase computers, let alone Internet service. Los Angeles police have a plan to attack both the digital divide and the violence. By year's end, the Los Angeles Police Department intends to place at least a dozen surveillance cameras inside the 700-unit, World War II-era complex and along connecting streets to Jordan High School.

Los Angeles city school officials were caught off guard this week by the Church of Scientology's role in an upcoming event at a South Los Angeles high school, which, while not illegal, is considered unusual. On Monday, teenagers from about 25 countries are expected to meet with students at Jordan High School in Watts for a conference on human rights.

Two students were arrested Thursday after several fights erupted in a crowded courtyard of Jordan High School, authorities said. No one was seriously injured in the fights, which started about 12:30 p.m., although about 200 students scrambled to get out of the way, and "I saw a couple kids with ice packs and scratches," said Long Beach Police Officer Jackie Bezart. School officials released students about 20 minutes early because of the incident, she said.

For one glorious week in June, Isaiah Henderson of Los Angeles Jordan thought he was in heaven. He'd wake up at 6 a.m. in his UCLA dorm room, enjoy an all-you-can-eat breakfast, go to math class, break for an all-you-can-eat lunch, study some more, devour an all-you-can-eat dinner, then go to sleep. "It was everything you can ask for," he said of his summer glimpse into life as a college student on scholarship.