My high school experience sounds somewhat similar to your second school. It was a large public high school in Southern California in the 1970s with about equal

My high school experience sounds somewhat similar to your second school. It was a large public high school in Southern California in the 1970s with about equal numbers of black, Anglo white, Hispanic, and East Asian students from lower-class and middle-class backgrounds. The school was unexceptional academically, and it did have problems, including gang activity (Crips and Bloods), racial tension, and drug and alcohol abuse among the students. But I don’t remember any of the emotional, social-hierarchy-based bullying that I have since read about at other high schools. I wonder if that might have been due to the size and diversity of the student population.