Board Chooses New Principal for Hawthorne High School : Education: Racial tensions in Centinela Valley school district remain evident as trustees name the interim replacement for Ken Crowe.

Racial divisions remained firmly drawn in the Centinela Valley Union High School District Thursday night as trustees chose the interim successor for a controversial black principal amid continuing allegations by some residents that the district has not treated blacks fairly.

Trustees, who had demoted Kenneth Crowe as principal at Hawthorne High School, replaced him with John Carter, the white vice principal of the district’s adult school and an 18-year veteran of the district.

The tenor of the meeting, the first since trustees fired Supt. McKinley Nash last month, suggested that the turmoil that beset the district in the 1989-90 school year has endured the summer vacation.

At one point, Stennis Floyd, an outspoken black parent, turned his back to the school board as he criticized the trustees from the podium. That prompted a group of whites, who were seated in the board room, to turn around in their seats so their backs were to Floyd.

In an address to the community, incoming Supt. Tom Barkelew fluctuated between conciliatory language aimed at easing racial tensions, and attacks on board critics, whom he called “evil persons who conspired to do bad things to good people.”

Barkelew, 67, is a retired Centinela Valley superintendent who was brought back to replace Nash, a black administrator who frequently clashed with the school board. Barkelew, who is white, said many parents of incoming freshmen are afraid to allow their children into the district, which has been torn in the last year by a two-day student walkout, racial accusations and the dismissals of Nash and Crowe.

Barkelew, said he has advised the parents to give the district one month and if their fears of further outbreaks prove true, he will allow them to transfer their children to another district.

“We have a tremendous job to do,” Barkelew said, adding that outsiders “think we live in a jungle--and we don’t.”

At the meeting, trustees dispensed quickly with new business and spent the rest of the time listening to a barrage of criticism from both black and white residents, who criticized Nash’s firing and a district press release that referred to some board critics as “conspirators.”

Joanne Johnson, the president of the Inglewood-South Bay branch of the NAACP, said her organization has not participated in any conspiracy and takes issue with such an accusation. She said the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People remains concerned that racial discrimination is not being aggressively investigated in the district.

“Your time is limited,” she told the board, made up of four Latinos and one Anglo.

In the press release issued earlier this week, Barkelew said the district has “evidence of a conspiracy to discredit the Board of Trustees in order to undermine the orderly operation of the district.”

The release also took issue with what Barkelew termed an “intrusion” by outside elected politicians, apparently referring to state Sen. Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles) and U.S. Rep. Mervyn M. Dymally (D-Compton). The release said the elected officials had hampered the board’s efforts to address racial tensions in the district.

Immediately after the March student walkouts, Watson organized a community group that came up with a 10-point plan to ease tensions, and Dymally sent an aide to the district to talk with district officials and community members.

In a statement issued earlier this week, Watson said she was invited into the dispute by Hawthorne Mayor Betty Ainsworth after students spilled out into city streets during a walkout at Leuzinger High School.

She said community members remain frustrated that the board refuses to discuss its dismissals of Nash and Crowe. Crowe has since been hired as principal of Inglewood High School.

“I am disappointed that the board has further inflamed community division by terminating Dr. McKinley Nash and by dismissing student concerns about racism by insisting that student demonstrations were incited by adults,” Watson said in the statement.

“For the superintendent to say that we were inciting this thing is totally untrue,” said Kenneth Orduna, Dymally’s chief of staff. “We were invited and we were trying to be conciliators. We were trying to help the school board, administrators and parents find a solution.”

Despite the rancor at Thursday’s meeting, board President Ruth Morales said she is looking forward to the new school year.

Board members have received more than 800 letters of support and additional phone calls, Morales said, prompting applause from the majority of the roughly 100 audience members.

“It is in times of crisis,” she said, “that people who care get together and unify. . . . We are going to focus on education.”

Carter, the interim principal at Hawthorne High, said he is interested in the school’s instructional program, not the controversies of the past. He predicted “a smooth year.”