When Push Came to Shove, Coach Let Him Take the Field : Education: A football player who knocked a teacher down before class was allowed to play that night. The incident is still generating controversy.

WESTCHESTER — A Westchester High School football player made an off-the-field tackle one Friday morning last month--hitting a teacher who was trying to break up a student fistfight.

But the player, defensive lineman Clifford Wilson, was still allowed to play in the Comets’ game that same night. They won. As it happens, the disciplinary dean who made the decision to let Wilson play was football coach Larry Wein, whose team is undefeated this year.

Principal Eileen Banta defends the handling of the incident, but she now reflects: “Was it poor judgment to let him play that night? Probably it was.

“But even kids who are wrong have due process rights,” she added. “Parents must be notified (before a student is suspended), and we couldn’t reach his family that day. This kid has never been in trouble.”

Wein said one reason he decided to let Wilson play was that “Clifford was remorseful from the beginning.” When the student gave teacher Jeff Portney what Wein described as a shove, Wilson believed Portney was another student, the coach said. “He didn’t realize he was a teacher until (Portney) turned around and started talking,” Wein said.

Portney, 28, a business teacher, suffered a back injury and has not returned to work since the Oct. 16 incident.

Wein said he could have kept Wilson out of the game that night regardless of whether his parents had been reached. He said he allowed Wilson to suit up and play because “he’d not done anything in practice to be benched.”

Wilson was later suspended for one week, which included missing a football game. Wein said he informed the player Friday that he would be suspended the following Monday, a decision jointly made by Wein, Assistant Principal Harry Haywood and Banta.

“I felt that was enough,” Wein said. “How much are you going to do to a child?”

Repeated efforts to interview Wilson and his parents were unsuccessful.

Los Angeles police investigated the incident as a possible misdemeanor battery, but this week “counseled and released” Wilson without bringing charges.

“He threw a body block at the teacher,” said LAPD Pacific Division Juvenile Detective Ron Stewart. “But we had nothing to prove he knew or did not know (that Portney) was a school employee. His parents seemed like they had it together, and he seemed sincere.”

Meanwhile, school district officials said they will order that Wein no longer participate in disciplinary decisions involving his own players.

Portney is one of three Westchester teachers now out on disability as a result of on-campus attacks. One was attacked in her classroom after school last year, apparently for her Rolex watch; the other was struck in the eye with an object thrown by a student last month.

Portney said he is fearful of returning to teach in a setting where assaults on teachers are not uncommon and security is minimal.

According to Portney’s account of the Oct. 16 incident, students were milling about unsupervised just before the morning bell.

“I heard noise from the grassy area, and then I see 200 kids in a circle. The principal was supposed to be on supervision at that time but wasn’t there. I walk up and see two ninth-graders shoving each other. They start fighting and beating the hell out of each other. I wait, but no one comes . . . even though there are 10 classrooms within a stone’s throw.

“I had to decide: Do I go and call security, stand by and watch . . . or try to separate them? They were not that big, but small and fast, so it was like trying to catch a chicken.

“I have them at arm’s length from each other when from behind I get this tremendous blow in the back that propels me some five feet forward into other kids. I saw stars.” He said that his neck snapped as he was shoved forward, but that his fall was broken by the spectators.

The teacher said that when he later asked the youth why he had pushed him, he replied, “ ‘Because I wanted to watch the fight!’ ”

Wilson himself has given varying accounts of the incident. Haywood, who reviews all disciplinary actions, said Wilson told school police he was actually trying to help Portney break up the fight.

In general, Westchester teachers interviewed by The Times agreed that football players are not coddled by the school. In fact, they said that threatening to report unruly students to the coach gives them extra leverage in the classroom, and that the coaches come down hard on athletes who misbehave.

Portney, a former accountant who has been teaching for two years, joined the Westchester faculty only this fall. “He is an excellent teacher,” said Banta, who continued to use Portney as a substitute after he was displaced from his regular assignment by a teacher with higher seniority who was transferred from another school.

His supervisor, Joan Barber, who chairs the business department, said she had warned the new teacher not to intervene in student fights. “I said, . . . ‘You’re gonna get yourself hurt. These older kids are not just silly--their fights are deeper stuff. . . . Call security and stay back.’ ”

Banta said she discussed the incident at a subsequent faculty meeting and reviewed safety rules, emphasizing that teachers should not attempt to handle violence on their own.

But, Portney contends, the students could have seriously injured each other had he waited for help to arrive.

One teacher who did call the office when she saw Portney in the middle of the melee said that school police did not respond for at least five minutes, perhaps longer.

Banta acknowledged that she was supposed to be supervising the area where the fight took place but had left her post unmanned for an emergency meeting with regional school district officials and school police on how to handle a threatened student walkout that day.

Portney said he had not initially intended to make a police report. He left appropriate disciplinary action up to the dean and agreed to a meeting with his attacker and his parents.

But he changed his mind, he said, when he learned that Wilson had been allowed to play football that night. Also contributing to his decision, Portney said, was his subsequent discovery that Wilson’s school records showed less than exemplary conduct in years past, although he has no record of physical violence.

Banta, however, said that Wilson’s behavior has turned around this year and that his academic work is also satisfactory. Math teacher Donna Madder described him in a recent report as “one of the best students I have had while teaching at Westchester.”

The consensus among teachers interviewed is that athletes do not as group present a discipline problem.

“If you have trouble with an athlete, all you have to do is go to their coach, and the kid magically shapes up,” said teacher Adrienne Zeigler, who chairs the chapter at Westchester for United Teachers-Los Angeles, the teachers union.

“My perception is that the phys ed department backs up teachers,” she said. “There is no pressure to make a kid eligible or to manipulate anything.”

Coach Wein said he shows no favoritism. “The reality is that I’m harder on my football players because I expect more of them,” he said. . . . I feel that on the whole they set a good example.”

But Don Bolton, Westside senior high division administrator for the Los Angeles Unified School District, said he is concerned that Wein’s dual role as dean of discipline and coach, though not uncommon among Los Angeles high schools, “creates a suspicion of a conflict interest.” He added that he was directing Banta to remove Wein from any involvement in decisions regarding discipline of members of his football team.

Banta said this week, however, that such a move is unrealistic, and that she is negotiating with Bolton.

Two full-time school district police officers, four part-time aides and five administrators share the responsibility for maintaining order at Westchester.

“I don’t perceive it as a dangerous campus as campuses go,” said teacher Ziegler. “It is very spread out over 43 acres, but they work very hard at keeping things under control.”

Nor does the 2,050-student school have a greater incidence of violence than other Westside high schools. So far this year, according to school district Police Chief Wesley Mitchell, Westchester has reported four acts of vandalism, one theft of student property, one assault with a deadly weapon and possession of a firearm, one burglary from a car, three batteries on students, and one incident of battery against a teacher.