South Bay Schools

A group of 27 community leaders, law enforcement officials and educators emerged from a hastily called, four-hour meeting Friday with a plan to ease racial tensions at two South Bay high schools. The 10-point plan, which includes provisions for community-wide race relations training and for an ombudsman to handle complaints, came at the end of a school week that began with two days of noisy student demonstrations.

One of Dennis Curtis' favorite duties as a member of the Wiseburn School District Board of Education is handing out diplomas at the eighth-grade graduation ceremonies. Long active in the small, kindergarten-through-eighth grade district's close-knit communities southeast of Los Angeles International Airport, Curtis counts many of the young graduates and their families among his friends and neighbors. "It's wonderful, issuing diplomas to kids that you've watched grow up, seeing how well they're doing," Curtis said.

Twenty-two South Bay schools, including Westchester High, the top-seeded boys' basketball team, will be competing this weekend in the 24th annual L.A. Watts Summer Games. The games begin Saturday at various Southern California sites. Championships are scheduled to be played the following weekend. Twenty high schools sent a total of 152 athletes to the first Summer Games in 1968. In 1991 more than 12,000 individuals representing 300 schools will compete.

The Los Angeles County Office of Education is planning to open a special needs school in El Segundo this fall to accommodate the overflow of students in special education programs in the South Bay. County education officials have signed a five-year lease to open the Imperial School. The former elementary school, which was leased by the county in the 1970s for special needs programs, was shut down 21 years ago when enrollment in the El Segundo Unified School District declined.

By this time next year, every second-grader in the South Bay elementary school district will read at grade level or be given free, intensive one-on-one tutoring for as long at it takes to meet the goal, the superintendent promises. That's the "Fail Safe" reading guarantee, the latest innovation by Phil Grignon, the district's iconoclastic superintendent well-known among his colleagues statewide for keeping teachers and administrators on education's cutting edge.

Tracking a statewide pattern that has educators concerned, the achievement test scores of South Bay eighth-graders slipped this year but remained higher than the Los Angeles County average. Of the 31 South Bay schools that administered the California Assessment Program test, only nine improved their scores since the last test was administered two years ago. The other 22 schools showed an overall decline in the testing, which covered reading, writing, math, science and history-social science.

A South Bay business organization plans to donate $100,000 in cash and products to South Bay schools this month. The South Bay Japan Business Assn. said it will make the donations to 43 area schools in appreciation for the education they provide to Japanese students while their parents work in Southern California. Schools in Torrance and on the Palos Verdes Peninsula will benefit most, said Rica Hirota, a representative of the nonprofit association.

With the continuing decline in the educational achievement levels of America's young students, the recent article about the extraordinary performance of South Bay Union Elementary School District came as a pleasant surprise ("No Easy A's in Top South Bay Schools," Nov. 26). With a student population of 68% nonwhite and 57% working poor, the superintendent and his staff observe that their students acquire basic skills in reading and math similar to districts servicing the economically advantaged.

A 19-year-old Carson man was charged Thursday in the rapes of two teen-age girls at South Bay schools, authorities said. Michael Roman Hartsdale was arrested Tuesday at his home in the 300 block of Palm Court by Torrance and Redondo Beach police. He was formally charged with rape, oral copulation and kidnaping for purposes of sex on Thursday. "We felt there was a similarity between Redondo's rape and ours," said Lt.

More than 1,500 harbor-area fourth-graders stood shoulder-to-shoulder at the Los Angeles Harbor College football stadium in Wilmington on Thursday to form a human sign spelling out the word "NEVER" to express their sentiments about joining gangs and taking drugs. The students, from 15 elementary schools throughout the South Bay, are recent graduates of an awareness program where they learned the dangers of joining a gang.

Chadwick School in Palos Verdes Estates has been swamped with calls from alumni who caught an inside joke on a recent episode of CBS-TV's "Murphy Brown." Executive producer Michael Saltzman paid homage to his favorite high school teachers by using their names for two characters who were corporate whistle-blowers. Saltzman credits English teacher Karen Stephens with fostering his creative itch and physics teacher Jim Spalding with being a positive influence on his academic career.

While some schools across the country have invited McDonald's and Pizza Hut into their cafeterias as alternatives to more institutional fare, Mira Costa High School in Manhattan Beach is marching to a different . . . er, lunch bell. For just over a month, students have found healthy offerings of salads, fruit and low-fat entrees next to the traditional cafeteria staples of French fries, fish sticks and cheese burgers.

The Inglewood educators wanted an honest report card and they got it: staff morale from kindergarten through high school is low, the curriculum has various inadequacies and the district is plagued by poor classroom instruction. On top of that, students in half of the district's 12 elementary schools are falling short of national and state standards when it comes to reading and language. The American Assn.

They've grown accustomed to their tax. Three years ago, Torrance homeowners were up in arms over a $25-a-year tax increase to maintain school property. This week, without so much as a peep from residents, the Torrance Unified School District voted unanimously to extend the maintenance assessment district for one more year.

A South Bay business organization plans to donate $100,000 in cash and products to South Bay schools this month. The South Bay Japan Business Assn. said it will make the donations to 43 area schools in appreciation for the education they provide to Japanese students while their parents work in Southern California. Schools in Torrance and on the Palos Verdes Peninsula will benefit most, said Rica Hirota, a representative of the nonprofit association.

For several days last month at North High School in Torrance, the ninth grade talked about virtually nothing but dead fish. Math classes, using various-colored dried beans, learned how the state Department of Fish and Game estimates the number of fish killed in polluted water. In physical education, students considered how a pond full of dead fish would affect the health of people nearby. In science, they studied how polluted water kills fish.

The imminent closure of Miraleste High School and declining enrollment at El Segundo High have forced the CIF-Southern Section to eliminate the Pioneer League and change the configurations of the Bay and Ocean leagues. The changes are effective next fall. Every two years the Southern Section determines which teams will compete in which leagues for the following two-year period.

For several days last month at North High School in Torrance, the ninth grade talked about virtually nothing but dead fish. Math classes, using various-colored dried beans, learned how the state Department of Fish and Game estimates the number of fish killed in polluted water. In physical education, students considered how a pond full of dead fish would affect the health of people nearby. In science, they studied how polluted water kills fish.

Tracking a statewide pattern that has educators concerned, the achievement test scores of South Bay eighth-graders slipped this year but remained higher than the Los Angeles County average. Of the 31 South Bay schools that administered the California Assessment Program test, only nine improved their scores since the last test was administered two years ago. The other 22 schools showed an overall decline in the testing, which covered reading, writing, math, science and history-social science.