Tustin School Officials, Parents Outraged by King Appearance : Complaints: District chief condemns beating victim’s presence at meeting of African-American student club. Adviser and members say talking with King was a positive experience.

School district officials, flooded with calls from angry parents, on Thursday condemned an appearance at a high school by the “infamous” Rodney G. King and vowed to find out why King was allowed to speak in one of their classrooms.

School officials were quick to distance themselves from King’s Wednesday night speech at Tustin High School, saying they had no idea it was planned and they would not have approved it because of the controversy surrounding King.

“We would not have sponsored it or supported it,” said Tustin Supt. David Andrews. “My feeling is that individual is too controversial for a school district to deal with. His name is infamous.”

Tustin High Principal Duffy Clark added: “I don’t view Rodney King as a role model. Role models, in my mind, are heroic characters, and I don’t know that Rodney King has done anything heroic.”

Clark said he believes King and his lawyer took advantage of “a captive, young audience. . . . The harm here is the perception that he was somehow deified or glorified.”

The appearance of King before a meeting of the African-American Student Alliance Club was apparently unexpected. The group had invited Milton Grimes, the attorney representing King in his lawsuit against the city of Los Angeles, to address its meeting, and students and faculty advisers said they were surprised that the lawyer brought King along.

The adviser, Judy Sampson, said she was “surprised there was such an uproar” over King’s appearance. “I thought it was all very positive.”

Students interviewed after the talk echoed her remarks, saying they appreciated the fact that King spoke bluntly and directly about the difficulties of growing up black in Southern California.

King fielded questions from the students on education, police, racism, his beating and a range of other, often emotional, issues.

“It was great,” said Lakeesha Cash, vice president of the club and a 10th-grader at Tustin High School, where about 7% of the more than 1,800 students are black. “It really changed my image of him.”

But Andrews said the content of King’s talk is less significant than the anger King’s speech provoked.

“I really don’t care about his message at this point. I care about what his appearance did to this community,” the superintendent said.

The controversy erupted Thursday after Tustin Unified School District officials and parents read news reports about King’s remarks to the 75 students.

Parents inundated the district with more than 70 phone calls Thursday morning--”all negative,” Andrews said.

Grimes said he received threatening phone calls because of the incident, and several people anonymously called The Times to object to a school appearance by a man who was on parole for armed robbery at the time of his beating by police. One caller threatened to shoot Times employees.

Donna Saltarelli, a Tustin parent, said she called district officials to complain about the talk. “It appears Mr. King’s attorney was using a public forum to condemn police officers who still have charges pending against them. It was a publicity stunt,” she said.

The strong reactions following King’s appearance mirrored the controversy that has followed the 27-year-old King since he was beaten by L.A. police in March, 1991--an incident captured on videotape and broadcast worldwide. The not guilty verdicts returned in April in the trial of the four officers charged with his beating set off three days of deadly riots.

King could not be reached for comment Thursday, but Grimes said: “I’m saddened by our so-called educators’ shortsightedness on what’s good for their students.”

The talk was intended as the first in a series of school appearances by King in the Southland, but Grimes said he is rethinking the plan.

Grimes said he thought the event was “a beautiful experience” that reversed King’s image as a “monster” and stressed to the mostly black audience the importance of education and hard work.

The lawyer said he was dumbfounded by the response. “I did not bring in a weapon. I did not incite disobedience or riots,” Grimes said, adding that he would bet that Tustin school officials wouldn’t have objected if he had instead brought in any of the four officers involved in the beating.

“If I had one inkling it would be controversial like this, I wouldn’t have taken (King),” he said.

Andrews said he plans to investigate whether any students or faculty knew that King was going to be present. But he added that Grimes appears to bear the brunt of the responsibility.

“Obviously, we were taken by surprise,” Andrews said. “And I’m very, very upset that someone took advantage of our students and our parents and our school’s good name to manipulate this situation.”