All-Black Panel in Inglewood Gets 2 Latino Members

Inglewood school board members have named two Latinos to a previously all-black advisory group aiding the search for a new superintendent, saying their original failure to appoint any Latinos was unintentional.

The district’s enrollment of 15,000 is about 56% black and almost 40% Latino, with small percentages of Asians, Pacific Islanders and whites.

The advisory committee was formed in late June to help select a new superintendent. Each of the four board members, all of whom are black, named five committee members. (There is one vacancy on the five-member board.)

Lack of Diversity

Board members said they realized the lack of diversity at a special board meeting Aug. 8, when the superintendent search was discussed in closed session. In an interview Wednesday, board President Caroline Coleman said the makeup of the committee became clear when consultant William Hawkins presented the complete list of the 20 committee appointees.

Board members said they had not received any complaints, but several Latino school district employees and community members noted the omission privately last month.

At the Aug. 8 meeting, the board added two whites as well as the Latinos to the committee, which held several meetings in July and will meet again this month to review applications from job candidates.

“I think it was an oversight on all of our parts,” board member Larry Aubry said in an interview Tuesday. “I’m as culpable as anybody else. It was preposterous. It was a goof as far as I’m concerned.”

Board member Zyra McCloud agreed. She said she had initially named a Latino “alternate” to serve on the advisory group.

Board member Lois Hill-Hale did not return phone calls.

The advisory group contains a cross section of school employees and city leaders such as Juvenile Court Judge Roosevelt Dorn, City Council candidate Garland Hardeman, school district Special Services Director Hollis Dillon and dentist Frank Lewis. Many have ties to board members.

Several Latino and black school employees and community members said they were disturbed by the board’s initial failure to include Latinos in the selection of a new superintendent because Latinos are the fastest-growing group in the district and may soon become a majority.

“It wasn’t appropriate at all,” said Susan Martinez, who runs the district’s Head Start program. Martinez said the board needs to reach out more to the Latino community, and said she hopes a Latino will run for the school board next April.

“The community at large is recognizing that the Latino community is growing, so why can’t the board?” Martinez said.

Latino and black school officials, employees and community leaders say the low profile of Latinos in the district results from insensitivity to Latinos and from language and cultural barriers that make many Latinos reluctant to take part in school affairs. The district has no Latino board members and few Latino administrators, and Latinos are under-represented at school board meetings and in parent groups, officials and residents said.

There are also no Latino City Council members or high-ranking Latino city officials in Inglewood.

Coleman said the district has been trying to recruit more Latino teachers and administrators.

Charles Coronado, a Latino businessman who has run unsuccessfully for the school board, said board members “do what they want. The fact that they didn’t name any Latinos meant that we weren’t going to have any input. It showed that they didn’t take us seriously.”

Coronado said the lack of outcry from Latinos on this issue shows that they need to become more involved in school affairs.

Several members of the advisory group said they were glad that the new committee members had been appointed.

“I hope it was just an oversight,” said Frank Denkins, a black businessman and original member of the advisory group, noting that there are few high-profile Latino leaders in Inglewood. But he added: “That’s no excuse. The schools should know who the concerned Latino parents are. By the time the new superintendent’s contract is ready for renewal in four or five years, the district could be 60% to 65% Latino.”

Advisory group member and former school board candidate Terry Coleman said the inclusion of Latinos was “a must. I feel they should also consider the possibility of a Latino superintendent. No one has even mentioned that possibility.”

The four new members of the advisory group are Hector Carrio, a Latino who is district coordinator of bilingual education and a member of the school board of the Lennox elementary district; Victoria Lechuga, a Latina teacher; James Crow, the white principal of Crozier Junior High School, and Leona Egland, governmental relations director for Centinela Hospital, who also is white.

Hawkins, the consultant for the superintendent search, said the new appointees were added in time to take part in the screening and interviewing candidates. Officials hope to have named a new superintendent by the beginning of the school year in September or soon afterward.

Supt. Rex Fortune resigned July 1 to lead a district in the Sacramento area. Inglewood community leaders are hoping to find a tough and charismatic superintendent to rejuvenate a district beset by financial woes and political squabbles.