Teacher Apologizes for Yearbook Photo of Students in Klan Garb

A yearbook photograph of an Agoura High School history teacher arm-in-arm with two students dressed in white robes similar to ones worn by Ku Klux Klan members has embarrassed Las Virgenes Unified School District administrators.

The photograph is of teacher Curt Miller minutes after the end of a class on intimidation tactics used by Klan members against blacks during the post-Civil War period. Miller asked the students to don the white sheets and hoods to dramatize the lesson.

The Agoura High yearbook staff and adviser decided to use the picture after much discussion, school administrators said. The picture was published above a caption stating that the people in white robes were students participating in a classroom demonstration.

“The yearbook staff debated the negatives and positives of using the picture,” Agoura High Principal Michael Botsford said this week. “On the negative side, they knew the picture might be misinterpreted. On the positive side, they believed it would illustrate how students learn about issues such as racism.”

Agoura High has an enrollment of 1,800 students, 20 of whom are black, Latino or Asian. Whites make up about 95% of residents in the affluent, western Los Angeles County communities served by the school. Botsford said some people in the area are not as aware of racial issues as are others who reside in multi-ethnic communities.

The first shipment of yearbooks was passed out to students last week. On Monday, when Botsford arrived in his office, a telephone call from an angry parent was waiting for him.

In the following days, Botsford said he worked hard to ease tensions. He met with a group of minority students, six black and one Latino, who requested the session to discuss the picture. He apologized to the students and said he plans to write letters of apology to their parents.

In a short speech broadcast over the school’s public-address system Wednesday, Botsford apologized and said that publishing the photograph “was a poor decision.”

“It should have never been published, even with the caption,” District Supt. Albert Marley said.