Many teachers are refusing to toe the ‘hard line’ at Inglewood High. : Support Slipping for Embattled Principal

Lawrence Freeman acknowledges that when he became principal of Inglewood High School three years ago, he planned to bully the troubled campus into a model of order.

“You can’t be soft on a campus that has the kind of problems Inglewood has,” Freeman said the other day. “You have to come down hard on everybody if you expect things to change.”

But now Freeman, 64, says his “hard-line” strategy for transforming a school plagued by gangs, graffiti and some of the lowest reading scores in the state barely got off the ground--weighted down, he said, by teachers who never gave his policies a chance; district officials who lost faith in him, and parents who praised his rigid academic programs but didn’t participate in them.

Although he still has some supporters in all three groups, more than $200,000 in stress-related worker’s compensation claims filed by teachers are pending against the district. All cite Freeman. About a dozen teachers have transferred from the school or have taken leaves of absence in the past 12 months. In addition, the Public Employees Relations Board has upheld eight counts of unfair labor practice charges filed by teachers over Freeman’s policies. Last February, about half of the school’s 85 teachers picketed the campus, calling for Freeman’s ouster.

Almost all of the teachers who left “were unable to cope with Freeman and his hard-line policies,” said Jacques Bernier, executive director of the Inglewood Teachers Assn.

“Teachers who taught there for years and were considered by all standards to be premiere teachers have left because they just couldn’t stand to work with that man and watch his policies destroy the school,” Bernier said.

Nonetheless, Freeman had strong backing from district officials--until recently. Now one board member is openly calling for his removal.

Freeman’s support started to wane after school opened in September and the school board and other district officials began to question his ability to unite the staff and revitalize the academic environment.

At the board’s direction, Supt. Rex Fortune sent Freeman a memo in late November threatening to remove or transfer him at the end of the year if teachers and other school employees continue to file complaints against the district or leave their jobs on stress-related disability.

Freeman acknowledged receiving the notice, which is the first step in removing an administrator under the district’s agreement with the Inglewood Management Assn., which represents school administrators. A second admonishment by March would be a “sure signal” that the district was planning to remove him at the end of the academic year, a board member said.

“We encourage all administrators to build a spirit of cooperativeness and teamwork and we have to take steps to make sure that happens,” Fortune said in an interview. He refused to comment further, saying he is unable to discuss personnel matters in public.

No other Inglewood High employees have filed stress or worker’s compensation claims against the district since Freeman received the warning, a school board member said.

But board President Earnest Shaw, who

says Freeman should be removed immediately to “restore a learning environment,” has introduced a measure that would allow the board to remove Freeman without going through the lengthy warning procedure. Though Shaw and board member Rose Mary Benjamin have said openly that they would like Freeman removed, Trustees William Dorn and Caroline Coleman declined to comment on the Shaw proposal. Trustee William (Tony) Draper said he opposes the measure.

Shaw’s proposed new policy, which will go before the school board in February, would empower the district to sidestep formal proceedings in “emergency or special” circumstances and transfer school administrators from one position to another without warning.

Though the policy would apply to all school administrators, Shaw acknowledged that the measure is aimed at Freeman.

Morale Low

“This whole thing has gone on for too long, it is time we got rid of him,” Shaw said.

“We have teachers leaving the district like crazy. Morale at the school is at an all-time low. The academic environment has suffered. A change has got to take place if learning is going to go on at that school.”

But Freeman supporters, including parents, students and some teachers, say Inglewood High has improved greatly during his tenure.

All agree that the high school was a mess when Freeman arrived in 1984. One district employee in a recent interview described the campus as a “hell hole.” A city employee said it was a “nightmare.” Trustee Draper called it a “jungle that no one had been able to tame.”

Graffiti covered the walls both inside and outside many classrooms throughout the sprawling campus at Grevillea Avenue and Manchester Boulevard, school officials said. Gang violence was rampant, test scores were low and the school had one of the worst truancy records in the county.

“We thought if anyone, Freeman would be able to bring it back to order,” Draper said in an interview.

Established Dress Code

Freeman established a dress code that prohibited hats, curlers, earrings on males, colored shoelaces, bandannas or anything else that could be construed as gang-related attire. The penalties for writing graffiti and skipping classes were increased, and students and their parents were required to sign contracts in which students promised to study every night and parents agreed to check homework each day.

“He may be tough to deal with, but test scores have increased, the school is clean, and more kids are going to class since he got there,” Draper said.

Seniors’ average scores on the California Assessment Program tests have increased from 49.8 to 52.9 in reading in the past three years, but they slipped slightly in writing. In math, the scores rose from 53.6 to 56.3 from 1983-84 to 84-85, but slipped back to 53.6 the next year. Statewide averages for 1985-86 were 62.7 in reading and 68.7 in math.

Many of Freeman’s opponents, and even some of his supporters, say the principal’s battle to improve the campus has left too many casualties. And the students, they say, are the biggest losers.

“Everyone is so wrapped up in this whole mess that it is hard to concentrate on what we are here to do: teach the students,” said Michael Nollan, a math teacher who has a worker’s compensation stress claim pending against the district.

Some Teachers Back Him

Many pro-Freeman teachers, however, say the approximately 40 instructors who are trying to have him removed “spend too much time plotting his overthrow and not enough time planning their classes.”

“If the teachers spent as much of their energy teaching as they do trying to get Freeman fired, the kids would be a lot better off,” said biology teacher Joyce Randall, who supports the principal and his policies.

Morale is low among the school’s 2,400 students, teachers on both sides say, with arguments between those who oppose Freeman and those who support him commonplace. Though teachers say they have tried to keep the dispute out of the classroom, some students say they are chastised by teachers whose views differ from theirs.

“I don’t like Freeman because I think he acts like a dictator, and I have a pro-Freeman teacher who treats me poorly because I have been open about what I think,” said one student, who asked that she not be identified. Likewise, students who support the principal say they are treated unfairly by some of the teachers who oppose his policies.

“I just wish the district would straighten this whole thing out,” the student said.

Supported by Parents

Most parents who attend school board and Inglewood Council PTA meetings show strong support for the principal.

“I am not saying the man is a saint but I have never seen anyone who is as dedicated to the students as he is,” said Ron Waddy, who pulled his daughter out of a school in another district and placed her back in Inglewood High after Freeman arrived.

“The teachers complain about how tough he is, but if they ever had a crisis they would run to Freeman and be glad he is the way he is.”

Though many parents support him, Freeman says that not enough of them participate in parent-teacher conferences, open houses and other academic programs that he says are crucial to the school’s success.

But he reserves most of his anger for district officials, who he says have abandoned him.

‘A Clay Pigeon’

“They have left me sitting like a clay pigeon,” Freeman said. “Any time that any one of those people who are against me don’t like what I do, they can holler about it with the hope that it will get rid of me. I am working with a hatchet over my head, like they are just waiting to say that I failed.”

But sitting in his brightly colored office, Freeman is surrounded by signs of his success at other urban schools. His cramped office is filled with the awards and plaques he earned as an administrator at Centennial High School and Willowbrook Junior High in Compton, where he defused gang tensions and decreased truancy by more than 50% with strict rules and high academic standards.

From 1975 to 1982, Freeman became a sort of guru for inner-city educators who visited Compton from all over the state to watch the principal in action. Freeman left Compton, however, in 1983 after he was demoted during a districtwide shake-up. The shake-up came after a government audit accused Willowbrook officials, including Freeman, of misusing more than $100,000 in federal funds on student entertainment that included trips to Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm. Freeman denied that the expenses were improper. No criminal charges were filed against Freeman as a result of the audit.

Inglewood officials hired Freeman the next year, hoping he could work the same magic he did in Compton on Inglewood schools.

Warm Reception

Freeman’s reputation for dealing with troublemakers and motivating students won him a warm reception from parents and community leaders. But what teachers call his “my way or the highway” management style alienated most faculty members and unnerved district officials, who said they wanted to avoid a showdown with the teachers union.

A union survey conducted a few months after Freeman’s arrival indicated that 88% of Inglewood High teachers opposed the principal and his policies and recommended that he be dismissed.

“From the very first day he got here he was acting like a madman, yelling out orders, telling us the way it was going to be,” said Robert Dillen, a world studies and civics teacher. “He never even made an effort to get to know us as people. He just assumed that we were all bad teachers and he thought he needed to whip us into shape.”

But Freeman said his acknowledged “get-tough” policy with teachers and students was “justified and even necessary” because of the problems that faced the school.

Teachers, however, say Freeman is too tough and have filed several charges of unfair labor practices over his policies with the Public Employees Relations Board.

Practices Ruled Unfair

In two hearings in November, 1985, administrative law judges found the district guilty of eight counts, all involving Freeman. They eight included unfair labor practices such as forcing teachers to check in their classroom keys at the main office before leaving the buildings, preventing teachers from distributing materials that criticized Freeman’s policies and refusing to allow teachers to have union representatives with them during disciplinary meetings.

The school board voted to appeal those decisions, and the appeal is pending. The teachers union, however, has filed three more complaints against Freeman that each include between two and six counts of unfair labor practices. The most recent charges were filed Jan. 9 and accuse Freeman of violating the teachers’ contract by requiring instructors to spend an additional four to five hours a week filling out deficiency notices for students who are receiving F’s or D’s.

“We already send out progress reports every five weeks,” Nollan said. “He is asking us to double our load without any kind of compensation.”

When asked about the new charges, Freeman called them ridiculous and accused the teachers of “making up any kind of excuse to tarnish my image.”

“They keep throwing ammunition at me hoping that I will just give up the fight but it won’t work,” he said.

“I will stay here because the children are my life and if I give up the fight I will be giving up on them.”