Old Foes in Centinela Valley School Closings Decide to Bury the Hatchet

Old adversaries in a bitter dispute over school closings have decided to put the battles of the past behind them and work together for the Centinela Valley Union High School District.

Virginia Rhodes, president of a parents group that launched a costly legal battle against the district after it closed Lawndale High School in 1981, said the organization will disband and turn over to the district a $17,000 scholarship fund derived from a court settlement of the dispute.

The 1982 settlement also required the closure of Lennox High School and the transfer of its mostly Latino student population to the district’s two remaining campuses--Hawthorne High School and Leuzinger High in Lawndale.

Lawndale High became the district headquarters and is also used for adult education and other classes.

The district was required to pay the legal costs--estimated by school officials at $200,000--for both sides.

“Many things have changed for the better,” Rhodes said. “The district is moving in the right direction educationally, and the administration and school board are committed to equal educational opportunities for all our students.”

In the class-action lawsuit, the group charged that the district was discriminating against Lennox students by keeping them segregated on a remote campus where they allegedly received an inferior education.

U.S. Dist. Judge Terry Hatter agreed with that contention and ordered the Lennox campus phased out over a period of three years. The campus was subsequently taken over by the Lennox Elementary School District for use as a middle school.

In an informal peace ceremony Tuesday at the district headquarters, Rhodes and Ken Hatcher, another veteran leader of Concerned Parents and Students of the Centinela Valley Union High School District, noted that their children, like those of other parents in the group, have grown up.

“We’re grandparents now,” Hatcher said. “A new generation is coming up, and we need to work together to ensure that they get a good education.”

Supt. McKinley Nash praised the parents group for getting the community more involved in school affairs and for focusing attention on the needs of minorities.

(Nash became superintendent in 1984, after the dispute was resolved, replacing Robert Ferrera, who became superintendent of the school system in Grand Rapids, Mich. Ferrera now heads the Minneapolis school system.)

The superintendent also credited the Lawndale parents group, which once claimed a membership of 1,100, with leading a successful drive in 1982 to change school board elections from at-large to area representation.

“That was a very important step in ensuring that all groups in this diverse community have a voice,” he said.

Student population is now 72% minority, up from 62% in 1982. Enrollment has stabilized at about 6,000 after a plunge from more than 10,000 students in the 1970s, he said.

Rhodes said the parents group, which received a $15,200 award in the court settlement, had used interest from the money to fund scholarships, ranging up to $500, to 28 students. The total of about $5,600 went to vocational and special-education students, and future disbursements under the district’s administration will go to youngsters in those categories, she said.

“There are many other scholarships available to college-bound students, so we felt that kids with other career goals should have some recognition and encouragement, too,” Rhodes said.

Hatcher acknowledged that the goal of the Lawndale group was to force the school board to reconsider its decision to close Lawndale High--a move undertaken during a budget crisis brought on by sharply declining enrollment.

“We had a bunch of irritated parents at first, but after we got over the shock of losing our school, some common sense set in,” Hatcher said. “We took a broader view and we saw some other things in the district as a whole that weren’t right.”

The group raised the segregation issue, he said, when members became aware of conditions on the Lennox campus at the northern end of the district. Jet aircraft landing at nearby Los Angeles International Airport were noisy irritants, buildings were deteriorating and educational standards were below those at other district schools, he contended.

“But I can tell you that it was never our intention to close Lennox,” Hatcher said. “We wanted all the schools to stay open.”

Sheila Stachowiak, a longtime Lennox activist who led a fight in that community to save the high school, said she still believes that Latino students lost out in the settlement. “Lennox High was a very special school to our kids,” she said. “It gave them identity; it gave them a chance to shine in a small group; it was the center for so many community activities.”

But, said Stachowiak, who is president of the districtwide PTA, “all that is behind us now. I know some good will come out of it when people decide to put aside their differences and work together.”