Schools curb student protests on immigration

Friday, March 31, 2006; Posted: 10:16 a.m. EST (15:16 GMT)


Los Angeles International Charter High School students participate in a march Thursday.
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Manage Alerts | What Is This? LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Student demonstrations dwindled Thursday at California schools as authorities began enforcing truancy rules after days of mass walkouts to protest legislation that would crack down on illegal immigrants.

No walkouts were reported in the giant Los Angeles school district, the nation's second-largest.

"I have to go to school today because they called my home and said I had to go to school or I'm going to get a citation," said Rene Hernandez, 15, a student at Van Nuys High School who took part in earlier protests.

A few hundred students walked out of classes in San Diego, a far smaller number than in previous days. "We are not having students walking off campus in large droves," district spokeswoman Music McCall said.

Tens of thousands of students took to streets around California and in other states Monday and Tuesday, but those numbers fell after police began breaking up marches and issuing costly truancy and loitering citations.

Authorities arrested 38 students in San Diego, mostly for loitering, said Steven Baratte, another district spokesman. Most were cited and released to their parents.

The neighboring Oceanside district took no chances, ordering its middle and high schools closed through Friday. Superintendent Ken Noonan said administrators had information "that violence and racial tension could escalate throughout the community during the remainder of the week."

In California's Central Valley, 200 to 400 students left Bakersfield schools, but there were no arrests, police Detective Jack Smith said.

About 500 students at Van Nuys High School attended a lunchtime forum, where immigration lawyer Jessica Dominguez urged them to stay in class.

"What are we doing when we walk out of school? We are telling the senators that are against the good immigration bills ... that they are right," she said.

In Houston, dozens of students who left class were arrested or cited and a principal was disciplined for flying a Mexican flag in front of his school.

The principal of Reagan High School, where 88 percent of the students are Hispanic, was disciplined after hoisting the Mexican flag below the American and Texas flags that usually fly in front of the building.

District officials instructed him to remove the Mexican flag a few hours later and he complied. District spokesman Terry Abbott said he could not give details about the punishment because it was a personnel matter.

Students also walked out of class in Austin, El Paso, and Dallas.

In Arizona, at least 800 students left class to gather outside a Tucson federal building, waving Mexican flags and signs and chanting, "We're not criminals
http://www.cnn.com/2006/EDUCATION/03/31 ... index.html