Trustee’s Hearing Reveals Bitter Fruit : Stress Claim by Woods Illuminates Rancor, Divisions in Compton Schools Leadership

She totes a Bible, quotes from Scripture and has been known to hum gospel tunes during tense business meetings. But if teachers in this city’s long-embattled school district view board member Bernice Woods as a spiritual leader, it is as much because she supports their drive for higher salaries.

When the Compton Education Assn. launched a strike recently, the hefty and hobbling 62-year-old Woods put aside her aluminum cane long enough to struggle onto a Gonzales Park picnic table and address a cheering union rally. A few weeks before, she engaged in a caustic shouting match with a board colleague who questioned whether she really cared about the teachers--currently the lowest paid in Los Angeles County--or was just latching onto a popular issue.

“Teachers do respect Mrs. Woods,” said Wiley Jones, executive director of the union. “She appears to be honest and up front with teachers. I think that respect has been there for years.”

Others dispute Woods’ sincerity and accuse her of being little more than an obstructionist during much of her decade in office; someone who has often seemed motivated by self-interest alone. They charge that her academic credentials are, at best, misleading, and her actions inconsistent with the cause of education. And rather than search for constructive ways to solve the district’s many problems, they contend, Woods’ open dislike of Supt. Ted D. Kimbrough leads her to play the spoiler.

“She doesn’t really care about teachers,” said Sinetta Trimble Farley, a former trustee who served with Woods in the early 1980s. “Mrs. Woods is an opportunist. . . . To me, Mrs. Woods is there for her own personal benefit and not for the benefit of children.”

Woods scoffed at that: “My record speaks for itself.”

But critics contend that Woods proved their point in June by filing an unprecedented workers compensation case against the Compton Unified School District, seeking lifetime medical benefits partly due to psychological stress allegedly applied by Kimbrough.

Woods has disagreed with Kimbrough’s administration since the first day he was hired in 1982. But she has been consistently outvoted by a 4-3 majority. That frustration, Woods contends, has aggravated a back, hip and knee injury she suffered on March 27, 1984, when she tumbled down a few steps while leaving the district board room. Now, she believes that Kimbrough is out to harass and embarrass her so she won’t run for reelection next year.

“When you’ve been in a community, you’ve worked in a community, you’ve tried to make a community better, and people outright try to smear your name, that’s stressful in itself,” Woods said last week. “I just want (Kimbrough) to stop it.”

Woods said she filed the workers compensation claim because it was necessary. “I’m not interested just in myself,” she said. “If I’m going to have to go to the doctor all the time, I need (money for) medical care.”

Rebecca Baumann, director of governmental relations for the California School Boards Assn., said recently that Woods’ stress case is the first her organization has ever encountered. Since there are 1,073 other school boards in the state, many with appointed superintendents occasionally in conflict with one or more of their elected bosses, Woods’ case could have significant ramifications.

“It would certainly set a precedent so far as we’re aware,” Baumann said. “Virtually all school board members during various periods of time are under stress. At what point is there a legitimate injury?”

As early as next week, workers compensation Judge Maurice J. Carey could answer that question when he delivers a ruling in Woods’ case. The matter isn’t likely to end there because either side can seek to have Carey’s decision reversed by the state Workers Compensation Appeals Board.

But testimony from half a dozen witnesses in the workers compensation case has already underscored the deep divisions between not only Woods and Kimbrough, but between Woods and other Compton board members as well. And Woods, one of Compton’s most visible public officials, has acknowledged under oath that she has no proof of many of the credentials she claims in her resume.

John C. Martin, an attorney defending the school district, contends that the information Woods put on her official resume indicates that she can’t be trusted to tell the truth as to her medical condition. “A great number of the statements in this resume,” the lawyer charged, “are false.”

According to testimony in the case, Woods’ resume states that she:

- Graduated from Los Angeles’ Jordan High School. Martin presented evidence that the school has no record of her attendance. Woods said she received a diploma that she cannot find.

- Attended East Los Angeles Junior College. Martin showed that she took one course in health education and received a D. Woods agreed.

- Obtained a bachelor of science degree from the California School of Nursing. Martin presented evidence that she has only a practical nurse’s certificate. Woods said she thought it was a bachelor’s degree.

- Obtained a bachelor of science degree in behavioral science from an unidentified school. During cross-examination, Woods said that degree also had come from the nursing school. Richard W. Wright, an investigator for Martin, testified that the school is now defunct but had “never issued at any time a bachelor of science degree.”

- Obtained a master’s degree in education. Woods testified it came from California State University, Long Beach. Martin presented evidence that the school lacks any record of her attendance. Woods said that degree is another that she received but cannot find.

- Holds a Ph.D. During cross-examination, she explained that she actually holds two: an honorary “Doctor of Divinity from the Universal Life Church,” which she obtained in 1981 by sending the organization a $100 donation and passing an examination dealing with “Bible questions,” and a doctorate in “school administration” from St. Stephens Educational Bible College.

Martin’s investigator said St. Stephens was closed by the state in 1980 for being a diploma mill, and its president pleaded guilty to forgery and grand theft. Woods said she had no idea that the college was phony because she actually attended lectures that discussed “your experiences in the Bible.”

“What do experiences in the Bible and lectures have to do with school administration?” Martin asked.

“I don’t know,” Woods replied.

Attorney Lawrence Gross, who represents Woods, repeatedly argued during the hearings that her resume--true or false--should not be an issue in the case. Gross charged that Martin’s questions were yet another attempt “to smear her reputation.” And to counter what he characterized as “innuendo,” Gross presented 21 plaques and certificates that have been presented to Woods over the years by groups ranging from the National Council of Negro Women to the National Congress of Parents and Teachers.

Woods said last week that she never deliberately put anything on her resume that was not true.

“Most people here in Compton know that I’m not a liar,” Woods said.

A one-time nursing attendant who raised nine children, Woods was elected to the board in 1975 and twice reelected. She served as president in the early 1980s, when the district’s leaders were accused of misusing federal money, allowing rampant nepotism and falsifying test scores that made it seem students were getting vastly better educations.

In one instance, Woods and eight other people took a trip to Hawaii on $6,440 in federal educational funds intended for disadvantaged children. State auditors made the district repay the money.

In another, she was criticized because her husband, Melvin, and three of their children had been employed by the financially strapped school system.

“In this community there’s only two places you can work, really: the school district and the city,” Woods said last week. She added that one of her sons remains on the payroll but only because he is a qualified worker. (Several other board members, both past and present, have had relatives who worked for the district.)

Woods was reelected in 1979 and voted to hire Kimbrough in October, 1982, during a period of sweeping reform that saw three of four other board incumbents defeated at the polls. Woods and Kimbrough almost immediately began to clash, according to an official summary of Woods’ testimony in her workers compensation case.

Kimbrough “promptly started to fire a number of employees, like the maintenance people,” Woods was paraphrased in the summary. Woods “felt that the discharges had no merits, were based on just secondhand and not personal knowledge. Kimbrough also showed disrespect for her, like not answering her memos. She had to remind him that the Board of Education was over the superintendent and not the other way around.”

When Kimbrough took the witness stand, he said he recommended that the employees be fired, but the actual decision was made by a majority vote of the seven-member district board.

Woods testified that she became even more upset when her son Greg, who worked as a school security guard, was fired after allegedly striking and discharging his gun at an unruly student nicknamed “Crazy Horse.” Woods insisted that her son was “framed” by Kimbrough, and that other security guards were at fault.

“She developed personality problems with Kimbrough,” the summary of Woods’ testimony states. “He became so disrespectful he wouldn’t even speak to her.”

One instance that left Woods feeling snubbed and embarrassed involved a visit to the district by Air Force Lt. Col. Guion Bluford, the first black astronaut to travel in space. Woods said she was not invited to ride with Bluford in a stretch limousine that shuttled him from Compton to Lynwood.

When Kimbrough testified about that incident, he said that no other board members had been invited to ride along either because there wasn’t enough room in the car.

Woods said she felt more stress when Kimbrough gave “just 20 minutes’ notice” before shifting her private office in the school administration complex from one room to another.

Kimbrough testified that he had given Woods an hour’s notice. And he defended the move as being necessary to eliminate unsafe working conditions due to overcrowding in an adjacent office. “She later called and objected to me moving her,” Kimbrough testified. “She appeared to be very angry, personally attacking me, that I didn’t have the right to do it, that I had some grudge.”

Judge Carey asked why the superintendent hadn’t given Woods a little more notice:

“It’s been my experience,” Kimbrough replied, “that the prolongation of those kinds of moves” can lead to time-consuming confrontations. “I don’t have that much time to waste.”

Finally, Woods said, she fears for her safety because Kimbrough has been known to carry a gun. Kimbrough acknowledged that “late at night, going home from board meetings, I would carry a revolver” in his car. Woods raised the gun issue at one school board meeting, and Kimbrough recalled that he “stood, took off my jacket” and raised his hands to show that he carried no weapon.

Fellow board members Sam Littleton and John Steward testified on Woods’ behalf, saying that Kimbrough once had the three of them investigated by the FBI and school security officials.

Kimbrough countered that he never ordered any investigation. But he confirmed that he and many other school employees had been questioned by FBI agents investigating district “business practices” based on allegations that arose before he became superintendent.

Fellow board member Mary B. Henry, whom Woods had accused of being a “bully as well as being a violent person,” took the stand and confirmed that the two have had several verbal confrontations over school district policies. Henry was nearly ruled in contempt of court when she delivered a biting and prolonged criticism of Woods:

“I perceive that Mrs. Woods is a pathological liar,” Henry said, her voice shaking with emotion. “We do not agree about what is or is not honest, we do not agree on what is or is not integrity, we do not agree on what is or is not fair. . . . “

Henry concluded by branding Woods as “a Bible-carrying, Scripture-quoting provocateur.”

“I am a child of God,” Woods said in reply last week. “Most Christian people do carry a Bible. . . . I’m not taking anything for show.

“People who know me, know me for who Bernice Woods is.”