Battle Lines Drawn on Peace Mural : Protest: Principal’s order to paint over graffiti-marred children’s artwork on outside walls of Washington Elementary School prompts threat of lawsuit.

A parent, an activist and an artist, angered about the painting over of a peace mural at a local elementary school, said Monday that they intend to take legal action against the San Diego Unified School District unless the school board pays for the art work to be restored.

The controversial mural, festooned with the message “Peace Please,” was scheduled to be completed Jan. 14, two days before the United States launched Operation Desert Storm with an aerial assault on Baghdad.

But, because Cecilia Fernandez, the principal at Washington Elementary School, thought that the mural was political and “had nothing to do with children,” the issue ended up in the hands of the school board.

After pressure from parents and backers of the school district’s Young at Art program, which gave birth to the idea, the board rescinded an earlier veto of the mural and allowed it to be painted. Those in favor of restoring the mural plan to petition the board today.

The mural, which covered several walls of the small, cramped campus on Union Street just north of downtown, was completed March 23. But vandals defaced the mural with graffiti over the Memorial Day weekend, and, last Tuesday, Fernandez ordered it painted over.

Walls that had once carried the message “Peace Please” now bear the institutional beige that was there before. And three people--the artist who painted it, a parent who championed it and an activist who wants it restored--gathered outside the school Monday morning for a press conference.

They refused to comment until television crews from local stations arrived, and, once the crews showed up--late--those who had called the conference blasted Fernandez and what they called the pro-military forces who, in their view, had torpedoed the mural.

The artist, Mario Torero, said he didn’t believe students or juveniles had painted the graffiti. He said he heard from a student named Juan, whose last name he didn’t remember, that the graffiti artist was, in fact, a teacher at the school.

Fernandez said the assertion that a teacher had scrawled the graffiti “is simply not a true statement. Graffiti is all over this school, all over this neighborhood. This was very crude stuff. You can’t even print what it said, and it wasn’t going to remain up.”

“It’s the janitor’s job to paint over any graffiti he sees, and, because this was so offensive and covered so much of the mural, I ordered him to paint over it. If people want to go to the board and complain, they can. Thank God it’s a free country.”

Parent Olga Butterfield said she believed her daughter, Luna, who had attended kindergarten and first grade at the school, is now being denied permission to attend second grade at Washington because of her mother’s pro-mural position.

Peter Brown, the activist head of Grass Roots Events, said he represents both the “peace community” and the “broader arts community” in fighting for restoration of the mural. He said the group is soliciting donations to repaint it or go to court.

Torero, who works with the school district’s Young at Art program, a $3.75-million endeavor funded by philanthropist Muriel Glick, said he painted the mural with the help of “50 different kids.”

Under the Young at Art program, artists are assigned to various schools to work with students on murals, individual projects or other activities intended both to teach fundamentals and to improve the environment of schools and their surrounding neighborhoods with a permanent piece of art.

But Fernandez disputed Torero, saying the mural was neither commissioned by the students nor painted with their cooperation or assistance. She said the debate over the mural was “never an issue about student censorship or anything having to do with students.”

“This was an issue about censoring Mario Torero,” she added. “It was never about censoring students. It was never a children’s issue. It never had anything to do with children. It had only to do with Mario Torero.

“He came into my office in January, when the students were on vacation, and said he wanted to paint a mural that would ‘shake up’ the drivers on the freeway and people flying in planes overhead. If this were a kid issue, I would have been the first to complain. But it wasn’t.”

Fernandez refused to discuss Butterfield’s contention that her daughter had been denied readmittance to the school for political reasons. Butterfield said she live in Chula Vista and for two years had been granted a special permit to let her daughter attend Washington.

“We never discuss an individual parent’s situation,” Fernandez said.

Fernandez said a decision to restore the mural would not be in the best interests of the school.

“This is a money issue,” she said. “If it costs $500 to restore a mural, why can’t we spend that money on kids? On books? A lot of the 350 kids here are homeless. They need medical care, shoes. . . . They have a lot of needs that aren’t being met by this mural.”

Peter Brown, the activist who organized Monday’s press conference-protest, seemed dismayed when he learned Fernandez was in her office at the time the mini-cams gathered outside.

“I thought summer school was in session,” he said. “Oh, geez. . . . We didn’t really want to be confrontational.”

Torero and Butterfield didn’t seem to share that concern. Torero said school authorities had been “consistently racist” in opposing what he called “peace efforts,” and Butterfield said Fernandez is directly responsible for the mural’s troubled history.

Butterfield, past president of the Parents-Teachers Assn. at Washington, said the “same people who did not agree with the mural in the beginning are responsible for its destruction. Am I right?”

Torero said he intended the mural to be “only a simple statement against war--after all, how can anyone be for war?”

“And now we have some functionary of the school destroying public property,” said Brown, the activist, “when we’re finding ways to cut $37,000 from the school district’s budget. Well, we intend to raise whatever it takes to restore it or fight it in court.”