Centinela District Begins the Year Smoothly : Schools: Many believe that the racial tensions of last year are under control. Not everyone, however, is convinced.

It looked like opening week at any high school: The drill team was practicing new routines on the center lawn, and students clutching crisp notebooks were helping each other find their classes.

On the surface, the beginning of the 1990-1991 school year in the Centinela Valley Union High School District, was calm and orderly--a remarkable contrast to the racial divisiveness and two-day student walkout that tore the district apart last spring.

Many attributed the peaceful atmosphere to a recent change of leadership in the district, but others said the quiet belies undercurrents of racial unrest.

“Look around,” Hawthorne High School junior Bryan Harper said during a lunch-break interview this week. “The Mexicans hang with the Mexicans. The blacks hang with the blacks. It should be everybody together, but everybody is not together.”

Sonja Davis, principal of Leuzinger High School, where last year’s student walkout began, said Thursday that the first week of school had gone off relatively smoothly and that she is looking forward to a good year. “I’m not putting my head in the sand and saying there aren’t some problems that exist,” Davis said. “Some may be exaggerated or exacerbated by last spring. But we are working on these problems. Things are going well.”

Allegations that black students and teachers are not treated fairly in the district persisted most of last year and continued through the summer when trustees fired Supt. McKinley Nash and demoted Hawthorne Principal Kenneth Crowe, both of whom are black. Crowe, who left the district to become principal of Inglewood High School, was replaced with veteran district administrator John Carter, while Nash’s post was taken over on an interim basis by former Supt. Tom Barkelew. Carter and Barkelew are white.

A state report issued late last month recommended that the board of trustees, which is predominantly Latino, develop programs to reduce racial conflicts and set up an ombudsman and advisory committee to investigate complaints from students and parents. Trustees, who say they have been unfairly accused of racism, maintain that the district has already taken steps to put many of the recommendations into action.

Although district officials have received several requests for transfers and were expecting a drop in enrollment, they now say parents appear to be giving the schools another chance. Davis said Thursday that enrollment is up from last year and that school officials have been scrambling to process paperwork and add classes.

A spirit of cooperation marked Tuesday’s board meeting, the first of the new school year. Whereas board meetings last year frequently lasted past midnight and were sometimes ended prematurely because of raucous outbursts from the audience, this week’s meeting was relatively quiet and ended in an hour and a half.

Barkelew spoke enthusiastically about teachers’ morale, saying staff members have “a very positive feeling of self-worth, respect for each other and a great respect for the diversity of the district. I’ve been out to the schools every day, and there’s just a good feeling.”

Many teachers and administrators who attended the board meeting said a workshop last week that focused on cultural diversity in the schools went a long way toward building trust and new lines of communication among them.

“Everyone is telling me this is their best year ever, that the kids are so nice and morale is so great,” said the district’s head librarian, Madeline Campillo. “There doesn’t seem to be the pressure of past years. We all seem to be going in the same direction and working for the best of the kids.”

But not everyone shared that view.

Lionel Broussard, a black community activist whose nephew attends Leuzinger High, said he believes that trustees may be inclined to take complaints about racism more seriously now that a new administration is in place. But he added: “I’m almost willing to bet you there will be more disruptions. If there is going to be progress, they have to come out first and openly say we do have a problem.”

Hawthorne typing instructor C. R. Roberts, a black teacher who has been an outspoken critic of the school board, said that, so far, the climate on campus is good, but that he does not believe the district has made any significant inroads against racial conflicts.

“You can’t say things are good until you have a disagreement and you know how things are going to be handled,” Roberts said.

Ricardo Cortez, a junior at Hawthorne High, said Wednesday that he expects the current school year to go more smoothly than last year, mostly because of the departures of Crowe and Nash.

Last year, most of the discrimination complaints came from black students and teachers. But in interviews this week, several Latino students said they believed that some black administrators and security guards had discriminated against them.

The most recent figures show Latinos accounting for 52.4% of the district’s students, while 18.7% are Anglo and 17.2% are black. Most of the district’s faculty members are white, and four of the five school board members are Latino.

Cortez and his friends expressed anger over instances last year in which they believe that black administrators gave preferential treatment to black students. Many said they believe that Latino students were punished for things that black students were not punished for and said such discrepancies prompted them to form a social group called MXP, which stands for Mexican Pride.

Several students said they expected Carter to treat them more fairly and that they were now more concerned about going to class and getting good grades.

“Last year, there would be a lot of discrimination against Hispanics,” Cortez said. Administrators “came down harder on Mexicans than on their own people. . . . But this year is better.”

Many black students, however, expressed a longing for Crowe, who often made a point of playing a game of basketball or lifting weights with them. And some of these students, who expressed distrust for Carter, said they were pessimistic about what the new school year would bring.

“I’m used to having the principal coming out and talking to us,” Hawthorne junior Massi Williams said. “But our new principal hasn’t done that. He just tells us to go to our class.”

Added Hawthorne junior Derrick Barbary, 16: “Why couldn’t they just go and find another black principal? Why do they have to get a white principal to replace Mr. Crowe?”

But Hawthorne student body President Lissett Pichardo, a senior, who overheard Barbary’s comment, took exception to the view that the principal’s color was an issue. “I don’t think color has so much to do with it. It’s who is going to be better for us.”

Although some black students said they believed that racial tensions would soon erupt again on campus, Pichardo disagreed: “Last year, there was a lot of animosity or tension, but I think there’s less now,” she said.