Darrell’s School : Education: A laid-back style and a willingness to listen were key traits that helped Darrell Hughes win the principal’s job at the Westside Alternative School.

The door, plastered with colorful paintings by children, reads “Darrell’s Door,” and it is always open. “Darrell speaking,” says the smiling man inside as he answers the phone, surrounded by congratulatory cards, balloons and plants--as well as unpacked boxes, uncompleted teacher evaluation forms and a yearbook to familiarize him with new faces.

After only one week on the job, Darrell Hughes says he hasn’t quite adjusted to his new role as principal of one of the most laid-back public schools in the district.

Voted into the job earlier this month by Westside Alternative School’s students, teachers and parents, Hughes came to Venice from a highly structured, formal setting at George Washington Carver Junior High in South-Central Los Angeles. At that school, which is five times Westside’s size, Hughes was assistant principal for student counseling and, since November, acting principal as well. He has been an educator for nearly 30 years.

“I came across as less structured,” Hughes said in explaining last week how he beat out 13 other candidates who vied in multiple interviews and essays for the coveted spot. “I can hang loose and go with the flow. I don’t let kids rattle me. When you go off the wall . . . you have lost the battle.

“My door is open, and students, teachers, parents and Venice neighbors can just come in anytime. If you honestly listen and show you are concerned about a problem, whether you can solve it or not is less important than that you listened and cared.”

Already, Hughes said, the elementary students (Westside goes from kindergarten through 12th grade) have been agitating to go off campus for lunch. “No,” he told them, but not before hearing a week of arguments. “I let them vent all their feelings.” And when the disgruntled owner of a nearby business complained that students were cutting across his property, Hughes listened, then promised to go outside when school lets out to reroute the youngsters.

He said he welcomes participation in decisions that elsewhere the principal makes alone. “But I think our students need to pick up some (sense of) responsibility,” he said. “When I met with the seventh-grade advisement group this week, I tried to stress to them that with choices come responsibilities.”

The 57-year-old educator had scored points in final interviews in front of about 100 people when he assured teachers he would respect their opinions, told parents he would defer to them in parent-teacher disputes because “we have to treat parents as our customers,” and proposed to students that he teach advanced algebra and Spanish and set up a joint sports program with Venice High School to avoid losing high school athletes.

Asked how he would handle an angry student who hurled epithets at him, Hughes told the group he would listen to the youngster’s gripe and, later, try to help him understand that such behavior not only evidences a limited vocabulary but will not help in situations in adult life.

Parent Linda Dove, who headed the search committee, had said at the outset that the alternative school and environmental magnet wanted its principal to be “a facilitator, not a boss,” and Hughes seemed to an overwhelming majority to fill that bill.

The selection process was watched carefully because Hughes was the first principal to be chosen under school-based management, a concept of local control that is sweeping the city school district.

Candidates had to meet certain minimum requirements established by the district, but the school itself sifted through all qualified candidates who applied, drafted its own questions and conducted the interviews themselves.

Hughes said the competition offered him a chance to be chosen “for my ability, not just because I was black. . . . In the past, I always felt I got promoted because they (district officials) were desperate for a black person.”

Although the school is predominantly minority, those who took an active role in the search for a new principal were mostly white. The six finalists included several blacks and women. “I really feel that we were colorblind on this,” said Bruce Green, one parent who participated.

One of six children born to a Pittsburgh grocer and a housewife, Hughes said he was turned on to education by “several teachers I had who were very concerned and influential.”

He worked his way through the University of Pittsburgh (he attended Cornell briefly) in mathematics--operating the evening switchboard at a residence for working females--and received a master’s degree in education from the University of Illinois. He earned California teaching credentials at USC and UCLA.

Hughes began teaching math in Watts nearly 30 years ago at Markham Junior High, then moved to Belmont, near downtown, where he doubled as math teacher and counselor--and sports announcer at football games.

When mandatory busing was ordered in Los Angeles, Hughes found himself as head counselor at Parkman Junior High in the Valley, which was receiving minority students from Crenshaw and sending white students there.

“It was a touchy situation,” Hughes recalls. “Parents didn’t want their children bused and the rules kept changing.”

He was made assistant principal at Carver in 1987.

“I’ve never looked past a job,” he says of his career moves. “I just assumed I’d be teaching for 30 years, and I’ve made changes when I felt I’d done everything I could in that position. I came here with the idea that I’ll remain as principal until I retire.”

An inveterate traveler--most recently to Thailand--Hughes plays tennis “like mad” and holds season tickets to the opera and symphony. He lives in a Los Feliz condo where he envisioned himself sitting by the pool with orange juice and a good book.

Instead, he is on the road at 6:30 a.m., often not returning home until after 8 p.m., after swinging by Carver to pick up more boxes of papers and books. “Taking this job was a choice, not a promotion for me,” he said. “I took a cut in salary, I’m driving farther, and I have less support staff.”

But he said he was drawn by the chance to be principal of his own school, the open structure of Westside, the change from a year-round school of 2,100 teen-agers to a single-track school with 400 students of all ages, and the dramatic difference in discipline problems.

“We have far fewer discipline problems here,” he said, “and they are not as serious as at Carver. I haven’t even had indications of gang activity,” although the school’s outside walls and painstakingly painted murals are marred by graffiti that he said “has to come down immediately.”

The difference in the two schools was underscored last week when Hughes found himself confronted by a crisis.

“A little kindergarten girl had lost her fruit punch from the machine, and she was crying. . . . So I got her a new one.

“When they come up with crises like this, you gotta keep a serious face.”