ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, February 8, 1997 TAG: 9702100027
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-4 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: WAYNESBORO
SOURCE: Associated Press
The superintendent of schools has agreed to reinstate at least five black students who were suspended after a confrontation with police at the racially troubled Waynesboro High School.
Eleven students - 10 black and one white - were arrested last week after police used pepper spray to break up a crowd of about 30 students who refused to return to class.
The students were agitated about a fight the previous day between a black student and a white student. Some members of the crowd surrounded and assaulted a police officer when he tried to arrest a disorderly student. The officer suffered scratches and bruises. One parent also was arrested.
``I am here tonight with an offer of reconciliation and renewed commitment,'' Superintendent Lowell Lemons said at a meeting Thursday with black community leaders.
Lemons promised to address racial tensions at the school that erupted last November when a hate message appeared on a bulletin board.
The student suspected of writing ``Blacks go to Africa'' on a poster is a black ninth-grader, said police Capt. William Maki. The student has not been charged in the matter but was one of the students arrested in the hallway confrontation last week, Maki said.
The youth will be disciplined by the school, said acting Waynesboro High Principal Robin Crowder.
The Rev. Donald Johnson, whose Union Baptist Church served as the site for the meeting with Lemons, said black students have been the victims of abuse and racial slurs.
``There may well have been persons in positions of authority who have not been as sensitive to minority concerns as they should,'' Johnson said.
The school's principal, Joe King, was reassigned to a central office post at his own request after last week's confrontation. King said he was concerned that he had become a focus of the racial tension.
The School Board, meantime, has agreed to hire a Richmond-based consultant to try to settle the school's racial problems. The consultant, Vallie Wendell Hylton, is a former civil rights specialist with the U.S. Justice Department.
About 15 percent of the 770 students at the high school are black.
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