Reassignment of 2 Principals Stirs Protests

Students, parents and teachers in Lomita are protesting plans to reassign two local school principals in the Los Angeles Unified School District, complaining that the changes will undermine continuity at the schools.

Forced to cut $220 million from next year’s projected budget, the district last week notified Principals James Marshall of Fleming Junior High and Patrick Donohoe of Narbonne High School that they will lose their positions as secondary school principals and be assigned elsewhere as assistant principals. They will be replaced by other administrators, who will lose more highly paid positions.

“It’s bad enough to lose one principal,” said Lomita Mayor Peter Rossick, himself a teacher at the district’s Gardena Elementary School. “To lose two in the same community--it’s a pretty bad situation.” Fleming draws students primarily from Lomita, where the school is located. Narbonne, in Harbor City, draws students from Lomita, Harbor City, Wilmington, Gardena and San Pedro.

Concerned parents tried to stir community support by hanging a 30-foot banner across Narbonne Avenue Tuesday evening that read, “Save Dr. Marshall--Fleming Jr. High’s Principal.” After city officials removed the banner Wednesday, parents made a second banner and draped it across a car parked opposite the school on Thursday.

Marshall and Donohoe were recently appointed to their current positions, making them vulnerable to demotion. Parents are concerned that another new principal next year would further disrupt continuity, said Enadine Bailey, president of Fleming’s Parent Teacher Student Assn.

Marshall and Donohoe are two of about one dozen secondary school principals in the district who are slated for reassignment, said Kathleen Price, the district’s administrative coordinator in the Personnel Division. Some elementary school principals also will be affected.

As part of the budget-slashing process, the district has decided to reduce the number of its upper-level administrative positions, Price explained. The administrators who now hold these jobs will then be “bumped back” into lower positions. As the bumping process makes its way down through the district, principals with less seniority are, in turn, demoted.

Bailey said she is concerned about whom the district might name to replace Marshall. “Our concern is that we’ll get people who have been away from a school site for so long, we’re not sure that they can handle the students and teachers,” Bailey said.

So far, Marshall and Donohoe are the only secondary school principals in the district’s South Bay-area schools who have been notified of reassignment. However, the budget is far from being finalized, and more bumping may be necessary, school officials said.

One district elementary school principal in the South Bay area also has been notified of reassignment, said Francis Nakano, superintendent of the district’s southernmost region.

Bailey and other parents have also asked the Lomita City Council to intervene on their behalf. Although the council decided to send letters to several district officials, Rossick warned that community protest may not be able to sway the Board of Education since the reassignment process depends strictly on seniority.

Trustee Warren Furutani, who represents the South Bay area on the board of education, noted that upper-level administrators may decide to retire rather than face demotion and thus Marshall’s and Donohoe’s situation may not be known definitely for weeks or even months. He said board policy is based on seniority but that it might be possible to waive the normal reassignment process if special requirements could be demonstrated.

Donohoe, who became Narbonne’s principal last September, said: “I just spent a year getting oriented and made a list of things I want to get done. I want to stay and do them.”

Bailey said concern is even greater at Fleming because the school went through a traumatic period in February, 1988, when the previous principal, Patrick Cragin, died of a heart attack. Marshall, who started work at Fleming shortly afterward, is particularly valuable because he is bilingual, she added.

“He’s got such an excellent rapport with the students, teachers and parents. He has the school under control,” said Cindy Grant, whose son attends Fleming. Gerald Johnson, a history teacher who has worked at the school 21 years, added: “We want to maintain some sense of stability. We feel this will unsettle everything.” Johnson is organizing a petition by teachers in support of the principal.

Marshall said he was flattered by the vote of confidence expressed by the community and that he would like to remain at the school.

The board of education must submit a tentative balanced budget to the state by June 30. Besides the shuffling of administrators, the board is discussing other budget-trimming proposals that could affect the district’s South Bay schools. Among them are larger class sizes, fewer school police patrols, less maintenance funds and smaller counseling staffs.