Roosevelt High School

The city's mayor is quietly taking control of a newly built high school in Boyle Heights, but the teachers union may challenge that conquest, part of a growing war between Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and United Teachers Los Angeles. The school at issue is the $106-million Felicitas and Gonzalo Mendez Learning Center, which is to open this fall.

Things were a bit discombobulated last week on the Eastside, where a generations-old allegiance to Roosevelt Senior High School has been upset by a new relative: the recently opened Felicitas and Gonzalo Mendez Learning Center. At Roosevelt, hallways shimmered with gold and crimson banners hung in anticipation of the biggest football game of the season against Garfield High School. At the new Mendez high school -- populated by many students transferred from Roosevelt's overcrowded campus -- the walls were bare; the gymnasium empty.

On Saturday, I drove to Boyle Heights for a garden dedication and saw an aspect of L.A. that most people don't know exists, something so different from the media stereotype that I wished everyone in town had been there. It should have led every newscast and been on every Page 1 so the event could burn into the consciousness of a city frightfully ignorant of itself. The event was the dedication of the restored Japanese garden at predominantly Latino Roosevelt High School.

Roosevelt High School in Boyle Heights may soon be graffiti-free. Long plagued by gang and tagger spray-paint, the high school now is the focus of the first "Adopt-a-Wall" program organized by Building Up L.A. An umbrella group of 60 community organizations is administering the program, in which groups of students are assigned a wall or building to keep free of graffiti. Formed after the 1992 riots, Building Up L.A. is part of President Clinton's AmeriCorps, styled as a domestic Peace Corps.

Sophomore Emily Castillo knelt before one of the 76 plastic foam crosses in a field at Roosevelt High School on Thursday, and gently pinned a baby-blue ribbon to it. It was in memory of her cousin Emily Castillo, shot dead in gang cross-fire just before Christmas a few blocks from the Boyle Heights school.

GARFIELD (4-1) vs. ROOSEVELT (2-3) * Site: At East Los Angeles College, Friday, 8 p.m. * Coaches: John Aguirre, Garfield, fourth year; Randy Rodriguez, Roosevelt, first year. * The matchup: Garfield is 4-0 in the City Section's Southeastern Conference and the favorite to win the title. Roosevelt is struggling at 1-3. But in this neighborhood rivalry, referred to as the "East L.A. Classic," records don't mean much.

Roosevelt High quarterback Fernando Delgadillo has one last chance to make his favorite dream a reality. It's a vision that started six years ago when he attended his first "East Los Angeles Classic." "I never really knew about the Roosevelt-Garfield football game until I was in sixth grade," said Delgadillo, a 6-foot-3 senior. "I didn't go to my first classic until the next year when I was 13. It felt great being in the stands with 25,000 people watching the game.

Their hair is a little thinner and they're a few pounds heavier, but Garfield Coach John Aguirre and Roosevelt Coach Randy Rodriguez haven't changed much since their high school football-playing days. Aguirre, 42, was a 5-foot-7 running back and defensive back at Garfield from 1969 to '72, helping the Bulldogs win three of four regular-season showdowns against rival Roosevelt. Rodriguez, 44, was a 5-foot-4 outside linebacker at Roosevelt from 1967 to '70.

The Garfield-Roosevelt rivalry began in 1926. The schools have played 60 games in that time, with Roosevelt leading the series, 32-21-7. Garfield, however, has won 10 of the last 15 games. The game was named "The East Los Angeles Classic" in 1972.

The Garfield-Roosevelt rivalry, one of the oldest in the state, generates more interest than any other. Some background: --The schools are located three miles apart in East Los Angeles. Many families in the community have some members who attended Roosevelt and others who attended Garfield, so they often don't sit together when the schools play each other.