Racial Tension Building for Months in the District

Monday’s demonstration by students from two South Bay area high schools, which was sparked by the resignation of a popular black principal, culminated months of racial tension in a district that has seen dramatic ethnic changes in recent years.

Hawthorne High Principal Ken Crowe announced last Wednesday that he would resign at the end of the year under pressure from the Centinela Valley Union High School District Board of Trustees, which decided last week to reassign him.

Crowe said the five board members gave him no reason for their decision and have not told him where they want him to work.

Board member Pam Sturgeon declined to comment on the matter and the other trustees--Ruth Morales, Michael Escalante, Amparo Font and Jacqueline Carrera--could not be reached.

The announcement by Crowe rekindled rumors among students at Hawthorne and Leuzinger highs and parents that the board intends to fire, or reassign, all minority administrators hired by Supt. McKinley Nash in recent years.

In past interviews board members--who include four Latinos and one white--have steadfastly denied such rumors.

Nash, who is black, became superintendent in the 1983-84 school year, when 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 by blacks, two by Latinos and one by an Asian-American.

For months the district, which has about 6,000 students, has been plagued by a spate of race-related incidents, ranging from anonymous notes and offensive cartoons targeting minority administrators to the confiscation in October at Hawthorne High of a mannequin designed to look like a dead black man.

In September, a white teachers union president referred to Nash in a meeting of Leuzinger and Hawthorne teachers as a “Stepin Fetchit” for state Supt. of Public Instruction Bill Honig.

The union president, Nancy Neussler, said she meant no racial slight by the term, which refers to a black actor in the 1930s who fawned over his white bosses. She later apologized publicly.

Nash asserts that the incidents stem from resistance to reform in his fast-changing district, which has seen its share of non-white students soar from 45% only 10 years ago to more than 80% today.

The district’s student body is 52.4% Latino, 18.7% white, 17.1% black, with the remaining 11.8% representing Asians, Pacific Islanders, Filipinos and American Indians.

However, some administrators and parents have suggested that a handful of white teachers who are having trouble working with minority administrators are behind the racial problems.

In interviews, Crowe has said the trustees have failed to support his efforts to halt the racial harassment of administrators at his school. He also said a small group of white teachers who want to take control of his school’s administration have pressured board members to remove him.

Sturgeon, in past interviews, has said no such pressure regarding any minority administrator exists.

At Sturgeon’s recommendation, the board agreed last month to ask the state Department of Education to study the racial tensions in the district.

The National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People says it has also begun an investigation.