Centinela Demotes Hawthorne Principal to Teaching Position

Hawthorne High School Principal Kenneth Crowe, whose rumored reassignment sparked student walkouts and racial unrest this spring in the Centinela Valley Union High School District, has been demoted to a teaching position at a continuation school.

Although Crowe’s status has been one of the most divisive issues in the district and has provoked angry criticism from the audience at packed board meetings, the announcement at Tuesday night’s trustee session drew little reaction from a small group of parents and teachers.

School board President Ruth Morales told the 30 spectators that the board voted 3 to 1 to reassign Crowe to a teaching position at R. K. Lloyde Continuation High School during a closed session at the previous board meeting on June 26.

Morales and Trustees Amparo Font and Jacqueline Carrera voted in favor of the reassignment, and Trustee Pam Sturgeon voted against it. Trustee Michael Escalante was ill and did not attend the meeting.

In an interview Wednesday, Morales declined to discuss Crowe’s demotion, citing the pending discrimination complaint he filed against the board this spring with the state Department of Fair Employment and Housing.

The teaching position would pay substantially less than a principalship, Morales said, although she did not know how much of a pay cut Crowe would have to take if he accepted the job. As principal, Crowe earned about $72,000 a year.

“Because we are in litigation, I can say nothing,” Morales said. “We felt he can do a good job teaching. We don’t have any other openings right now.”

Crowe was not present during the board meeting and could not be reached for comment.

His attorney, Artis C. Grant Jr., said in an interview Wednesday that Crowe is entitled by law to a classroom position and would probably accept the teaching job if he could not find another administrative position.

“He holds an administrative credential and he’s held both vice principal and principal positions, and to demote him to being a classroom teacher at the dropout high school is a real kick in the teeth,” Grant said.

He called the district’s treatment of Crowe, who is black, “extremely abusive” and “racially motivated,” adding that there was no basis for removing him as principal.

“They had no evaluations, no process, and there was a total disregard for his performance,” he said. He added that the decision was “based solely upon certain board members’ political agenda.”

Four of the five board members are Latino.

Sturgeon said in an interview Tuesday that she voted against assigning Crowe to a teaching position because she wanted to follow Supt. McKinley Nash’s recommendation to assign Crowe to another administrative job.

“In my view, it was a substantial demotion,” said Sturgeon, the board’s only white member.

Nash refused in an interview Wednesday to confirm the nature of his recommendation, saying he could not comment because “the reassignment has been made by the board and is a legally contested situation.” Nash has been a strong supporter of Crowe.

Many of the parents and community leaders who have been most vocal on behalf of Crowe said the board should have made public its reasons for demoting him.

Adrain Briggs, a member of the Committee for Racial Free Education, a black community group formed to address racial tensions in the district, said Tuesday that it was “a long time to wait to hear so little” about Crowe’s reassignment.

“Most people kind of expected it, but hopefully, it’s not the end of it,” he said, referring to Crowe’s discrimination complaint. The substance of the complaint has not been made public.

Crowe, who had been principal of Hawthorne High since February, 1988, recently applied for a job in the Inglewood School District, which has also been beset by racial tensions, as well as conflicts between administrators and district trustees.

Inglewood began compiling a list of candidates for a principalship after its board voted in May to reassign Inglewood High Principal Lawrence Freeman, who had been under fire for his leadership style and strict disciplinary measures.

Although Inglewood district officials have said they consider Crowe a strong candidate for the principal’s post, school board members late last month reopened their search, saying they want a larger pool of applicants.

Crowe has been told he ranked No. 1 after the initial group had been interviewed and tested, Grant said.

Crowe had also applied for the principal’s job at Duarte High School and was among the top three candidates for the post. But the Duarte Unified School District board last month promoted someone from within the district.

- Crowe started at Hawthorne High in 1985 as dean of students before being promoted the next year to assistant principal and then to principal. Under his tenure, he oversaw several changes at the school, including the reassignment of more than 30 teachers who had been teaching in areas for which they lacked credentials.

Several teachers, who had weathered a bitter contract dispute with the district’s top administrators in 1989, bristled at the reassignments and accused Crowe of favoritism and poor management skills.

Crowe has said he is a victim of racism and late last year began accusing school board members of not moving fast enough to eradicate racial tensions in the district.

In early March, Crowe received a letter telling him he would be reassigned at the end of the school year. Crowe responded by announcing he planned to resign. However, in an interview Tuesday, Morales said the board never received a letter of resignation from Crowe. Instead, Crowe wrote a letter to the board asking that he be reassigned to a similar or higher position in the district, Morales said.

It was Crowe’s announced resignation--along with allegations that the decision to reassign him was racially motivated and was a payoff for the teachers union’s help in electing three new board members--that led to massive student walkouts on March 5 and 6.

The board later sent Nash a letter asking him to place Crowe on medical leave, but Crowe said he was not ill and refused to leave.

The state Department of Education’s Office of Intergroup Relations recently completed an assessment of racial tensions in the district. That report will not be made public until state attorneyes review the report for accuracy.