New Board Faces Old Feelings About Race : Education: Three new members of the Centinela Valley Union High School District board who scored upsets over supporters of a black superintendent were among those hearing complaints about tensions.

The traditional political honeymoon for newly elected officials didn’t last past the swearing-in ceremony in the Centinela Valley Union High School District.

Minutes after new board members Jacqueline Carrera, Amparo Font and Pam Sturgeon took office Tuesday night, more than a dozen parents, educators and community leaders took to the podium to complain about racial tension in the district.

Several of the speakers, most of whom were black, indicated they would fight any plans that the revamped board may have to force out black Supt. McKinley Nash or the minority administrators serving under him.

“We’re here primarily to avert a great miscarriage of the educational process,” said Jose De Sosa, president of the NAACP’s California State Conference. “It is not our intention to stand idly by when the board takes action that could create severe problems in the school district.”

Said Nathaniel Jackson, dean of vocational programs at El Camino College: “Realize that racism and bigotry have no place when you’re trying to care for our children. Take the courageous step: Keep your superintendent.”

New board members, who deny they have hatched plans to dislodge the Nash administration, appealed for calm. Sturgeon sought to assure the audience that questions about the new board’s commitment to racial equality were rooted in false rumors spread during the campaign.

“I have been accused of many things in my lifetime, but I have never been accused of racism and bigotry until I ran for this board,” Sturgeon said at one point in the nearly five-hour meeting. “I am not a racist. All I’m asking is that you give me a chance and I’ll give you a chance, and maybe we’ll pull this district together.”

Speculation about a possible administrative shake-up has been strong since the Nov. 7 school board election, when Sturgeon and Carrera, both of whom have been critical of Nash, beat two incumbents who were strong supporters of the superintendent. Font unseated a third Nash supporter but has not voiced an opinion on the superintendent, whose $89,000-a-year contract expires in 1993.

The fall campaign was marred by controversy over allegations that white teachers working to unseat the board incumbents had also been harassing minority administrators appointed by Nash. The charges have caused racial tension in the fast-changing district, where more than half the student population was Latino, 18.7% white and 17.1% black in 1988.

Among the race-related allegations aired Tuesday was a charge by De Sosa that a Hawthorne High School teacher gloated to students in class the day after the school board election that the new board would remove minority administrators.

Hawthorne High Principal Ken Crowe confirmed in an interview that a minority student in the class and her parents have filed a formal complaint alleging that the teacher made racially derogatory comments about black administrators who he hoped would be dismissed.

Crowe said he could not release the names of the people involved but said the student, a senior, and another member of the class reported the incident to him the day it was alleged to have taken place.

“They came to see me because they were upset,” Crowe said. “It was just very racially derogatory stuff.”

The main purpose of Tuesday’s meeting was the swearing-in of Carrera, Font and Sturgeon and the election of new officers by the five-member board. (Board members picked veterans Ruth Morales and Michael Escalante as president and vice president, respectively, and chose Carrera as clerk.)

Soon after these events had been marked with a pause for fruit punch, coffee and cookies, however, the new board found itself embroiled in the race-related concerns generated by the outcome of the election campaign.

In that contest, board incumbents Ann Birdsall, Aleta Collins, and Herbert Bartelt--all strong supporters of Supt. Nash--were swept from office. The upsets have been attributed in part to the work of the Centinela Valley Secondary Teachers Assn., the union that represents the district’s overwhelmingly white teaching corps.

The union, which Nash blames for the alleged harassment of his minority administrators, formally endorsed Carrera and Sturgeon and gave them strong campaign support.

During Tuesday’s meeting, Carrera underscored her Hispanic heritage and sought to make clear that she would not be beholden to the teachers union, saying she considers herself “a very independent person.’