Schools Get Dead Serious: No Weapons : Expulsions: Districts have ‘zero tolerance’ for students who bring guns or knives. Two L.A. campus killings have made them even more determined to act firmly.

Isaac Ugay had been a consistent honor student, a star of the Brea-Olinda High School varsity soccer team and a member of the student government. He was described by the district superintendent as a model student. He was the smart kid on the block.

That is, until Feb. 2, 12 days before his 16th birthday. That day, he said, he did something stupid. He said he pulled out a knife to scare away kids who have been harassing him because of his Filipino-Mexican ancestry.

“I wanted to make sure I’d be safe,” Ugay said. “I know now it wasn’t a very smart thing to do.”

For pulling out the knife, Ugay, a sophomore with a 3.57 grade-point average, was expelled from the Brea-Olinda school district after an expulsion hearing conducted Feb. 22 by the Board of Education.

Ugay is not alone.

In the past month, a 13-year-old student was arrested for carrying a .22-caliber handgun at Niguel Hills Middle School in Laguna Niguel and is facing expulsion. Two fifth-grade students used a pellet gun to threaten a student at a school in the Buena Park School District and were transferred to another school.

In Costa Mesa, an 8-year-old third-grade pupil at Sonora Elementary School was caught playing with a 13-inch knife. He, too, was transferred.

These cases underscore what Orange County school officials describe as the need for “zero tolerance” of weapons on campus.

In response to the growing incidents of school violence, including the shooting death of two students in the Los Angeles Unified School District, school officials are more determined to expel students who take guns, knives and other deadly weapons on campus.

Students with excellent scholastic records, like Ugay, are not exempted.

“He pulled a knife, period,” said Brea-Olinda district Supt. Edgar Z. Seal. Seal declined to go into further details of Ugay’s expulsion because of district policy to keep such matters confidential. But, he said, Ugay’s status as a “model student” was never a factor.

“He was a model student until this incident,” Seal said. “But the board has zero tolerance for knives and weapons. If you get caught, you’re expelled.”

The parents of expelled students are often caught in a bind.

Those interviewed for this story said they understand the need for the hard-line policy--and approve of it. But, they said, school officials must make sure that students feel safe at school so they don’t have reasons, or excuses, to carry weapons.

In fact, in Isaac Ugay’s case, his mother, Margarita, told school officials that he carried a knife to school. She said the knife was not found in her son’s possession, although several students saw him brandish it. She said she wasn’t sorry she told administrators about the knife.

“I knew it was something too serious to be swept under the rug,” Margarita Ugay said. “He made a mistake. He has to answer for it.”

She said it made her mad that her son, who had never been in trouble before, found the need to carry a knife to feel safe in school. She said that while her son was held responsible for his actions, school officials also have to be held accountable for what happens in school, including harassment of students.

Another parent, the father of the 13-year-old student who carried the handgun to school, said he approves of the zero-tolerance policy and agreed with school officials that his son deserved to be punished.

“Wrong is wrong,” he said, “and carrying a weapon to school is wrong.”

Like Margarita Ugay, he said school administrators must make sure students feel safe at school. The problem, he said, is that school administrators perceive safety differently than students.

While administrators think everything is fine, it’s the student who deals with the bully every day, he said.

Nina Winn, who runs the Orange County Department of Education’s programs on school safety, said school administrators have worked hard to make students feel safe at school.

“Many things are being done to promote safe school environment,” Winn said. “We promote cultural appreciation and cultural diversity in our curriculum. We teach positive respect because it must not be assumed that students are learning that (at home).”

She said students are trained in peer counseling and conflict management. Schools have adopted dress codes, closed some campuses and developed hundreds of other school programs on safety.

Administrators say students must tell school officials when there’s a problem. But sometimes that’s easier said than done, conceded Todd Spitzer, a member of the Brea-Olinda School District Board of Trustees.

“We want to fix the problem, but we cannot fix it if there is a code of silence which is based on fear,” Spitzer said. “We have to put an end to that fear.”

Spitzer said many students are afraid to tell school officials about such problems for fear of reprisal.

“We must have zero tolerance for weapons on campus, but we cannot tolerate harassment or racism either,” Spitzer said.

Winn said there is a tendency to focus on racial tension as the cause of conflicts among students, but she said there are many reasons.

Fear of a rival gang is one common reason, according to Helen Moore, principal of the North County region of Horizon Schools, a county-run school system that accepts expelled students and those referred by probation officers.

“Sometimes, it’s not racial. It’s turf, when rival gangs are involved,” Moore said.

She said the weapons problem on campus is not ethnic, but cuts across economic and racial lines.

There are 20 Horizon Schools in four regions of the county. It started with five students in 1983 at a church hall in Santa Ana and has grown to 1,579 students this school year, Moore said.

Many students expelled by the various school districts end up at Horizon Schools, she said. A third of the school’s student population has been expelled from the districts. At least 65% have been referred to them by probation officers.

Over the past four school years, student expulsions have increased, according to records at the Orange County Board of Education.

Georgiann Boyd, the county coordinator for student services, said expulsions nearly doubled from school years 1989-90 to 1991-92.

Aside from taking weapons to school, students may be expelled for using or selling drugs, theft, assaulting a teacher or other school employees, inflicting serious injuries on fellow students, and recently, in some school districts, for sexual harassment.

Boyd said there was no readily available statistics on what offense was behind most expulsions.

While the zero-tolerance policy applies to all students, some school districts appear to be more lenient on younger students.

In the Buena Park School District, two fifth-grade students who threatened a student with a pellet gun were expelled but the expulsion was “suspended” by the Board of Education. District Supt. Jack Townsend said the boys were transferred to another school but must follow a strict “behavior contract” to remain in that school.

“Children learn by their mistakes,” Townsend send. “Our purpose is to work with the parents and the children to keep them in school. Bringing a weapon is very, very serious. But the penalty must fit the crime.”

School administrators said it is easier to deal with younger students. A suspension and transfer to another school may be enough, unless the offense is so serious that expulsion may be necessary.

Many students manage to return to their original schools and those in the Horizon School system have often returned to their home districts. Moore said that last school year, 267 students returned to their districts.

“We’re sort of a halfway house for students,” she said.

Expelled students may apply to go back to thir original district, usually after one semester. In some cases, they may return after one school year, provided they meet certain requirements imposed by the school board.

In Ugay’s case, he may be allowed to go back to Brea-Olinda after a year. But his mother, Margarita, doesn’t want him to go back. Ugay is currently enrolled at Servite, a private parochial school in Anaheim.

“I’m not willing to send him back,” Margarita Ugay said. “I’m not sure that he’s safe.”

Times staff writer Eric Young and Times correspondents Debra Cano and Bob Elston contributed to this story.

Expulsion Explosion

During the past three years, expulsions at Orange County schools have increased 61%. The actions are mostly of students in grades 9 and 10.

Grade 1989-90 1990-91 1991-92 K 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 2 0 1 0 3 0 4 1 4 1 2 0 5 2 3 6 6 21 22 39 7 45 45 46 8 59 60 89 9 71 98 142 10 77 100 117 11 42 58 61 12 11 17 30 Total 329 410 531

Source: Orange County Department of Education