Hawthorne High’s Chief to Quit Over ‘Lack of Support’

Hawthorne High School Principal Ken Crowe Wednesday announced his intention to resign at the end of the school year, saying the Centinela Valley Union High School District Board of Trustees has failed to support his efforts to eliminate racial harassment at the school.

Crowe, who is black, said he feels the board has been slow to address a series of race-related incidents on campus. He said its lack of support was “a modern-day lynching.”

Crowe, who has been principal at the school for two years and was an assistant principal there before that, said he submitted his resignation letter to Supt. McKinley Nash Wednesday morning.

Nash declined to comment.

Board member Pam Sturgeon, who learned of Crowe’s letter Wednesday afternoon, said the district has made a serious effort to address the racial tensions.

Board members Ruth Morales and Jacqueline Carrera said Wednesday that they had not heard about Crowe’s resignation.

Although the board has asked the state Department of Education to investigate racial tensions in the district, Crowe said the board members have not acted strongly enough to.

The incidents began several weeks before last November’s school board elections. Crowe said Wednesday they most recently included the discovery in a classroom last month of a Confederate flag and a poster of Adolf Hitler.

He said that when he confronted the teacher about the flag and the poster the teacher went to Sturgeon, who permitted them to remain. However, the teacher did remove the items when a student complained to the teacher that they were offensive, Crowe said.

Crowe would not name the teacher.

Sturgeon disputed Crowe’s version, saying she did not talk directly with the teacher but learned of the dispute from Nash. Sturgeon said she did not require the social studies teacher to remove the items because they were being used in lessons about World War II and the Civil War.

“To me it was not derogatory,” she said.

He also cited an incident last fall in which administrators confiscated a grisly mannequin designed to look like a dead black man, which was being used by a teacher in a film class at the high school.

The film teacher said the mannequin was not intended to be offensive.

Crowe said he believes a handful of white teachers are behind the incidents, which also include a number of racially offensive notes and cartoons that were anonymously sent to black administrators.