Investigator to Probe Centinela School Unrest

In its first session since disruptive walkouts at two of its campuses, the Centinela Valley Union High School District Board of Trustees voted unanimously last week to hire a private investigator to look into allegations of racism and determine whether any district employees instigated the demonstrations.

At a heated meeting that drew more than 200 parents, teachers and students, several board members said they would seek the immediate dismissal of any employee found to have encouraged the demonstrations.

“I would like to reassure parents and members of this community that I believe any school employee, be it certificated, classified or administration, who has encouraged or helped with the destruction of education, should be immediately removed,” board member Jackie Carrera said. The audience erupted into applause.

“There are those of us that say the walkout was orchestrated by adults,” board President Ruth Morales said. “If it’s true, we need to find out who did it. The purpose of this is to try to get to the bottom not only of the walkout but of the accusations and allegations that have been made since the (school board) campaign” last fall.

During the last two years, the racially mixed district has been plagued with allegations of bias after a series of race-related incidents. The accusations came to a boil this month after Hawthorne High Principal Ken Crowe said he would resign from his post because the board had told him that he would be reassigned.

Crowe’s resignation, along with rumors that other minority district employees were being targeted for dismissal, sparked a massive student walkout March 5, when students at Leuzinger High School in Lawndale marched to nearby Hawthorne High. At one point the demonstration included about 2,000 students from both schools.

Crowe has since asked the board to rescind his resignation.

Last week’s meeting was marked by several angry outbursts from speakers and members of the audience, many of whom held banners and signs. Stennis Floyd, a Hawthorne resident and community activist whose two sons graduated from the district’s high schools, banged the podium with his fist as he accused the board of being controlled by the largely white teachers’ union.

“The board has lost control,” he said. “They were not hired for the business of educating our children. They were hired as a lynch mob for the teachers.”

Zyra McCloud, who chairs the NAACP’s Inglewood education committee and is a member of the Inglewood Unified School District board, urged the board to rescind Crowe’s resignation.

McCloud warned: “If injury comes to the black administration or anyone we feel is being unfairly treated . . . the NAACP will descend on this school district like you’ve never seen before.”

In an interview this week, Crowe said the board is trying to force him to take a medical leave of absence. “How can they force me on . . . leave when I’m not ill?” he asked.

The real reason for their decision, he said, was disclosed in a letter he received from the board Monday in which board members said they had lost confidence in him and disagreed with his management style.

Board members, asked whether Crowe was being forced out on a medical leave of absence, declined to comment, citing district personnel policies.

The district has undergone dramatic changes in its racial makeup during the last 10 years. In 1980, 45.6% of the student body was Anglo, 33.7% Latino, and 12.1% black. By 1988, Latinos accounted for 52.4% of students; 18.7% were Anglo, and 17.2% were black.

The district’s faculty is overwhelmingly Anglo. About 31% of its administrators, including Supt. McKinley Nash and two principals, are black.

Although the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People and the state Department of Education’s Intergroup Relations Office have begun assessing the racial climate in the district, board members said Tuesday there is still a need to find out exactly what happened during the walkouts.

“We have to do this, otherwise it’s not going to stop,” Morales said. “It’s not a witch hunt. We’re just out to settle these allegations.”

The board has left the decision of choosing a private investigator to its attorney, who is expected to hire an investigator by Friday.

“We want to pick someone who can do this in a confidence-inspiring way,” said attorney Mary Dowell of Liebert, Cassidy & Frierson, the firm that represents the board.

The probable length and cost of the investigation are not yet known, Dowell said. Nor is it known whether the investigator would send out letters to encourage people with information about the demonstrations to come forward, she said.

The school board had previously asked the Hawthorne Police Department to conduct a criminal investigation into the walkout. But after speaking to two merchants who suffered losses during the protests and reviewing a chronology of events submitted by Nash, the police decided not to pursue an investigation.

“I couldn’t see anything productive coming out of it,” Hawthorne Police Capt. David Barnes said in an interview Wednesday. “There’s some indication that some adults made statements that may have been inflammatory. So what? If there wasn’t an issue the kids felt strongly about anyway, would they have been so wound up?

“The incident and underlying issues there must be addressed,” Barnes said.