State at Centinela to Assess Tensions

State Department of Education officials say they hope to begin a healing process at the Centinela Valley Union High School District, where hundreds of students took to the streets last week to protest alleged racism and the resignation of a black principal.

Part of that process will begin today when a team of educators and an attorney from the state Department of Education’s Intergroup Relations Office is expected to arrive and begin assessing the district’s racial climate.

State Assistant Supt. of Public Instruction Ramiro Reyes said the state’s team of experts will interview parents, teachers, administrators and students and make recommendations to the school board.

Reyes said the Intergroup Relations Office has conducted at least four such assessments in other districts throughout the state. In those cases, he said, it took between three days and a week for the team to complete an assessment and draft a set of recommendations. Reyes said he is not sure how much time it will take the team to complete its Centinela assessment.

After the interviews have been completed, the assessment team can make any number of recommendations, including asking the district to develop training programs for teachers and administrators to heighten understanding among various ethnic groups.

However, Reyes was pessimistic about finding a quick solution to the district’s problems, adding that it would be naive “to expect a solution in 24 hours.”

“You can’t erase these kinds of feelings so quickly,” Reyes said. “It takes a while with human behavior to make a change.”

Racial tensions in the 6,000-student district came to a head last Monday when students marched out of Leuzinger High School in Lawndale and walked to nearby Hawthorne High. At one point about 2,000 students joined the demonstration, which alleged that racism was behind the resignation of Hawthorne Principal Ken Crowe.

Demonstrations were smaller Tuesday and ended Wednesday after a brief sit-in at Leuzinger.

The unrest followed a series of race-related incidents that have occurred in the district during the last two years. The incidents range from the confiscation last April of a mannequin designed to look like a dead black man to several racially offensive notes and cartoons sent anonymously to black teachers and administrators.

Crowe has said he resigned, effective at the end of the school year, after the board told him he would be reassigned to another post but gave him no reason for the decision. He said during the demonstrations that he will ask the board to rescind his resignation.

On Friday, 27 community leaders, including law-enforcement officials and educators, gathered at a hastily called meeting organized by state Sen. Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles) and emerged four hours later with a 10-point plan to address tensions in the district.

The plan, which is supported by board members, administrators and teacher representatives, includes provisions for school- and community-wide training in race relations and for an ombudsman to handle complaints in the district.

The plan also calls for investigations and assessments of tensions in the district by local law-enforcement agencies, the state Education Department and the federal Office of Civil Rights. Last month, the school board also had asked for an assessment by the state.

Reyes said the state assessment team faces a complex task.

“Everybody has an opinion about what is wrong,” he said. “We will try to get some clarity.”

Some black parents say they believe the school board and the district’s mostly white teachers union are at the root of Centinela’s problems.

On Monday, Adrian Briggs, whose nephew attends Hawthorne High, said he and about 13 other black parents have formed the Committee for Racial Free Education in Centinela.

He said the group’s goal is to end racism in the district and promote a greater voice for black parents in school issues. “Black people have no input whatsoever,” he said.

Briggs accused the board of being slow to respond to the series of racial incidents and said his group will work to recall all school board members.

Board members have denied such accusations, saying they are committed to ending racism in the district.

At a press conference Wednesday near Hawthorne High School, Charles Prater, a black Hawthorne High teacher, charged that an article that appeared in the Los Angeles Times on Sunday did not adequately represent the views of African-American teachers in the district.

He also criticized The Times for printing the views of Nancy Nuesseler, president of the Centinela Valley Secondary Teachers Assn., whom he accused of being racially biased. In September, he said, Nuesseler insulted “every African-American in the district” when she called Supt. McKinley Nash a “Stepin Fetchit,” a reference to a black actor in the 1930s who fawned over his white bosses.

In an interview Wednesday, Nuesseler said she has apologized publicly for the remark, adding, “I don’t think that making one statement makes me a racist.”

Prater also asked that board members make public their reasons for reassigning Crowe.

Board member Jacqueline Carrera declined to comment, saying school board members would violate state education codes and the district’s own policy if they were to publicly discuss Crowe’s employment status.

Nuesseler said Wednesday that many teachers are convinced that some district employees helped incite the student unrest. She said teachers at Hawthorne High are circulating a letter this week asking law-enforcement officials to investigate the student protests and to file criminal charges against any adults who encouraged the demonstrations.

A similar letter was signed last week by about 70 teachers at Leuzinger High School.

Nuesseler declined to say who she thinks encouraged the protests but said that during the demonstration a four-page letter citing a list of alleged racial incidents was circulated among students.

Nuesseler said she believes some of the information in the letter, titled “A Failure to Stop the Lynching,” could only have been obtained from administration officials.