Centinela School Board May Seek Race Bias Probe

Pressured by complaints that the district has been slow to respond to a spate of race-related incidents, the Centinela Valley Union High School District Board of Trustees this week will consider asking a state, federal or civil rights organization to investigate racial tensions in the district.

Board member Pam Sturgeon called for an investigation last month, saying that continuing complaints from parents and representatives of the NAACP about race-related problems in the district have kept the board from focusing on education.

“I am asking for an investigation by the Civil Rights (Commission), the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People and the state of California to put these allegations to rest,” Sturgeon said at the Jan. 22 board meeting.

In an interview last week, Supt. McKinley Nash said that in response to Sturgeon’s request he will give the board a list of state, federal and civil rights authorities that he believes are qualified to investigate racial problems. He said he will ask the board members to choose one or more agencies they want to handle the investigation.

Among the agencies that the superintendent will propose at the board’s Tuesday meeting are the state office of the NAACP, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, the state Department of Education and the state Department of Fair Employment and Housing, Nash said.

The race-related allegations, which began to surface several weeks before last November’s school board elections, include a racial slur by a teachers union leader and the confiscation at Hawthorne High School of a grisly mannequin designed to look like a dead black man.

Although the board is scheduled to discuss the issue further this week, Jose De Sosa, president of the state conference of the NAACP, said his organization started investigating racial tensions in the district the day after Sturgeon made the request at the January board meeting.

“She gave us the message (and) that gave us authorization to start the investigation,” he said.

He said NAACP volunteers have begun interviewing teachers, administrators, parents and students to discuss such incidents as the confiscation in April, 1989, of the black mannequin and two recent incidents in which black students were allegedly physically abused by white staff members.

De Sosa said the NAACP will submit its findings to the state Department of Education or the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

In an interview last week, Reuben Burton, director of the state Department of Education’s Intergroup Relations Office, said he has not talked with Centinela officials, but said his agency would--if the district requested--conduct an assessment of the racial tension in the district and then suggest ways to address the problem.

Burton said his agency has worked on similar problems in other school districts, including the Clovis Unified School District near Fresno.

In that case, Burton said racial tensions were high because members of the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacy groups were recruiting students on campus. He said his agency drafted a report to the school board suggesting, among other things, that district teachers be required to attend special classes on race relations and that the board form an advisory committee to oversee race-related problems.

Philip Montez, regional director of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, said that because the regional office must respond to complaints in 17 Western states, his agency probably would investigate Centinela only if complaints were filed against the district by a parent or a group of parents.

“We have to move that way because we don’t have the resources and people to look at everything,” he said.

Annabella Hwa, district administrator for the state Department of Fair Employment and Housing, said her agency would not investigate unless formal charges were filed by a district employee against the district.

Melanie Lomax, the school district’s attorney, said she supports an investigation because it would indicate that the district is moving to address the problem. She said bringing in an agency from outside the district would give the investigation more credibility.

“It’s not a cancer that cannot be addressed,” she said.

Lomax said the previous school board asked her last year to investigate alleged incidents of racial insensitivity toward black administrators by members of the teaching staff at Hawthorne and Leuzinger high schools. She said her investigation--which she recently submitted to the newly elected board--concluded that a handful of teachers have harassed minority administrators by anonymously sending them a number of racially insensitive notes and cartoons.

The racial problems, she said, stem from dramatic ethnic changes in the district. Since 1979, the percentage of Latinos and blacks in the district has risen significantly. To accommodate the change, Nash, a black who became superintendent in the 1983-84 school year, has hired several minority administrators, including Hawthorne Principal Ken Crowe, who is black, and Leuzinger Principal Sonja Davis, who is of mixed race.

When Nash became superintendent, four of the district’s 19 top-level administrative posts were held by minorities. Of the district’s 20 top-level posts today, nine are held by minorities--six blacks, two Latinos and one Asian-American.

In September, 1989, teacher’s union President Nancy Nuesseler referred to Nash in a meeting of Leuzinger and Hawthorne high school teachers as a “Stepin Fetchit” for state Supt. of Public Instruction Bill Honig, who is white.

Nuesseler says she meant no racial slight. She later apologized for the remark.

Last April, Hawthorne Principal Crowe confiscated a mannequin owned by Michael Gold, a film teacher who is white. Crowe says the mannequin, used in the movie “Coma” to portray a dead black man, is racially offensive and should not have been brought on campus.

Gold’s attorney, Timothy Dallinger, says his client has kept the dummy on campus for the past 10 years and used it to demonstrate the power of special effects.

As for the recent incidents involving two black students, Lomax declined to provide details until the board completes a review of the matter.