7 School Employees Allege Racial Bias in Letter to State

Seven employees of the Centinela Valley Union High School District who say they have been harassed and intimidated in the wake of massive student walkouts last year have complained of racial discrimination to state and federal authorities.

The complaints were made in a letter dated March 20, 1991, and sent to the state Department of Fair Employment and Housing and the federal Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights. The letter alleges that interim Supt. Tom Barkelew, members of the board of trustees and several administrators “have engaged in ongoing threats, harassment, and retaliation to citizens and employees in violation of our civil rights.”

District officials deny the allegations, which they say are similar to other formal complaints made against the board of trustees. They also say the authors of the letter, who released its content at Tuesday’s school board meeting, are out to get the trustees.

Fourteen racial discrimination complaints against the district are pending before the same state and federal agencies, Barkelew said.

Officials with the federal and state agencies said Wednesday they had not yet seen the recent letter. They said the allegations would be investigated, a process that can take up to several months.

The letter’s authors confirmed Wednesday that they had mailed it to the two agencies this week.

The letter accused Barkelew and the trustees of singling out African-American employees in the district’s effort to gather information about who organized a protest walkout of about 2,500 students on March 5 and 6, 1990, that affected Leuzinger and Hawthorne high schools.

“We allege that these actions of retaliation and threats were racially motivated and violate our rights as American citizens,” the letter said.

On the first day of the student walkout, about 2,000 Leuzinger and Hawthorne students left their classes to join in a demonstration march; the second day, about 500 Leuzinger students walked out while police officers prevented all but about 50 Hawthorne students from leaving campus.

At the time, many students said they had walked out of class to protest the way blacks are treated in the racially diverse district and to show their support for former Hawthorne Principal Kenneth Crowe, a black administrator who announced he was going to resign because the mostly Latino school board did not support his efforts to eradicate racism.

But district officials, who hired a private investigator to gather information about the walkouts, concluded in July that disgruntled employees and other adults organized the demonstrations to discredit the trustees and further their own political goals.

The recent letter was written by Adrain Briggs and Lionel Broussard, co-founders of the Committee for Racial Free Education, a group formed in the aftermath of the student walkout to support black employees, parents and students in the district.

They said they wrote the letter to the agencies on behalf of the employees, who signed their names and provided their addresses and phone numbers. The employees decided to complain as a group because they feared retaliation, said Broussard and two of the employees.

In an interview Wednesday, Barkelew said he had not yet seen the letter, and questioned Broussard’s motives.

“He has said before he’s out to destroy the board,” Barkelew said. “I have no idea what his purpose or design is. . . . It’s all negative.”

Tuesday’s meeting was adjourned early when Briggs, who was seated in the audience, began demanding that the trustees answer a black parent who complained at the meeting that Barkelew would not return her phone calls.

Board member Pam Sturgeon told the woman that the board cannot speak on any item that is not posted on its agenda, but Briggs was not appeased, saying the board’s silence was just one more example of how the district deals with blacks.

“We’re sick of being looked over, mistreated, and you people don’t want to do anything!” Briggs shouted as deputies tried to calm him down and trustees left the room. “From now on, we’re going to stop these meetings at the beginning, not the end.”