Grant High Parents, Staff Discuss Melee : Violence: Back-to-school night crowd confronts officials about Tuesday’s incident. Principal says campus is safe.

VAN NUYS — It was an emotionally loaded back-to-school night Thursday at Grant High School. Beyond conferences with teachers over grades, parents came to hear about ethnic violence earlier in the week that resulted in two Armenian boys being stabbed and a Latino boy shot.

After cake and coffee, Principal Eve Sherman described the series of incidents Tuesday, emphasizing that the violence happened off campus.

Police from the Los Angeles Unified School District and the Los Angeles Police Department have said the two Armenian boys were stabbed in the back a block from school after a melee involving 50 to 100 students in the school parking lot. In a separate incident several minutes after the stabbings, a gunshot from a passing car struck the Latino boy in the leg about three blocks from the school.

All three boys are recovering at their homes, Sherman said.

Police have made no arrests in the incidents and would not make public the names of the injured students.

Sherman, acknowledging that there had been tension on the campus and earlier fights between the two groups, assured parents Thursday that Grant is a safe place for their children.

“Whatever was going on moved off campus,” she told an auditorium crowd of about 375 parents and students. “They knew they better not mess with what’s going on here.”

Before the meeting, parents--some worried, some angry and some curious--milled about with their children, quietly checking report cards and saying hello to other parents.

“I have two daughters and they’re not involved in these things, but I’m scared they might get caught in it,” said Angela Khalulyan, an Armenian immigrant who spent half the evening with 15-year-old daughter Roxanne and half with 17-year-old daughter Kristina.

“I came for a better, safer life, and now I worry about my kids in school,” she said.

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Students were eager to point out that parents ought not to worry, saying the violence is limited to a small group and that Grant is, overall, a good, safe school.

That point was underscored by Sherman, who challenged the news media to report good things about Grant--that 76% of last year’s graduating class went on to college, and that last spring the school administered 496 advanced placement tests.

Parents still had questions, however. Sherman reassured one mother that there are daily sweeps with metal detectors by school police and random locker checks when warranted.

A woman who said she was the mother of one of the boys who had been stabbed approached Sherman after the meeting, asking why the school did not do more to protect her son.

And she had another question. “Why didn’t the principal come to the hospital?” she asked reporters. “My son, maybe he could die.”

Most of all, the mother, who declined to give her name, wanted reporters to know that her son’s friends said they had warned school administrators before the violence that there was going to be trouble.

Tensions between the two ethnic groups have been running high at Grant for some time, students and faculty said. A brawl last spring prompted school officials to send students to a one-day seminar aimed at improving relations.

After a fight last week and another incident Monday at lunch, students said, they were waiting for a more serious clash to erupt.

School officials have said they did what they could to prevent violence. They have tried to address problems with the students as they occurred, officials said, and plans were in place for a daylong diversity training seminar for faculty members next week.

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School district police have said that the lone officer assigned to Grant had requested help Tuesday because of rumors of a fight.

An extra officer was dispatched on Tuesday, school police said, but not until after classes had ended. By the time the additional officer got to the school, the situation was too much for two officers to handle and a general assistance call was put out for help from any officers from any agency.

Francisco Granados brought his 10-year-old son, Francisco Jr., to the meeting. His daughter, Elisa, a freshman at Grant, was studying at home, he said.

“It is better for Armenians and Latinos to be here than in our own countries,” said Granados, who came to the United States 17 years ago from El Salvador. “We can learn to be friends.”