Students Hold Protest for Second Day : Schools: No violence reported as unrest continues over a principal’s resignation in racially tense Centinela Valley district.

High school students upset about administrative changes in a South Bay-area district they attribute to racism staged a second day of protests Tuesday, some walking off campus and joining sympathizers at another school, authorities said.

Tuesday’s protests began about 9 a.m. at Hawthorne High School, where a popular black principal recently announced that he will resign, saying he was under pressure from the Board of Trustees of the racially tense Centinela Valley Union High School District.

The protest ended shortly before noon at Leuzinger High School, about a mile away in Lawndale, where a student walkout on Monday erupted in sporadic fights, vandalism and thefts.

Nine students were detained Tuesday for truancy and one adult was arrested on suspicion of trespassing on campus, police said. No injuries were reported.

Five students were detained Monday. One youth was held after he allegedly threw a piece of concrete at a school bus and the others were released to their parents, Hawthorne Police Sgt. Mike Effler said.

Police, nearly overwhelmed Monday by at least 2,000 unruly student marchers who stopped traffic on six-lane Rosecrans Avenue, were ready Tuesday when students gathered outside Hawthorne High in preparation for an announced walkout, Effler said. At least 70 officers were called in from half a dozen neighboring agencies.

“We basically decided, after talking with school officials, to keep them on campus today,” Effler said Tuesday. “Through a bullhorn, I told them that the place for their forum was on campus, not the streets. They didn’t like it very much. But most turned back.”

As the time for the walkout approached, however, about 100 students began “testing our perimeters,” Effler said. “Some managed to break past us and into the residential neighborhood. They were tracked to Leuzinger.”

At Leuzinger, the Hawthorne students were met by several hundred others, said Joe Finnegan, a district spokesman.

“The Leuzinger administrators tried to have assemblies to discuss the students’ concerns,” Finnegan said. “The sophomore assembly went fine, but the juniors for some reason went out the door. We don’t know exactly what triggered it.”

Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies and other law officers managed to round up the unruly group, keeping them on campus where about 500 Leuzinger students and their Hawthorne compatriots held a rally before the event broke up and most students returned to classes, deputies said.

Schools Supt. McKinley Nash had scheduled a Tuesday afternoon news conference with student and school representatives to discuss the issues plaguing the 6,000-student district. But Finnegan announced later that the 1:30 p.m. briefing at district headquarters had been called off on the orders of School Board President Ruth Morales.

Finnegan said “the school board has requested investigations by the NAACP, the state Civil Rights Commission and other civil rights groups, to come in and look at our district, go through the charges and make findings.”

The board, he said, is “very interested in getting all of these (allegations of racism) cleared up or remedied.”

Hawthorne Principal Ken Crowe announced last Wednesday that he would resign at the end of the year because board members had told him that he will be reassigned to another, unnamed position.

Crowe has told The Times that he does not want to leave the school and he believes that the board’s move to reassign him is a “political payoff” for a white teacher who supported the elections of three new board members last fall.

Crowe told reporters Tuesday that he would not remain silent about his resignation.

“I don’t know what the feeling of the board is. I have not had any communication with the board. I do know that I will request a meeting with the board, and I will ask them to rescind my resignation,” he said.

Board members have declined to comment on the matter.

As the school day wound to a close Tuesday, some students were vowing to continue the walkouts until their grievances are heard by the board.