‘Racially Hostile’ Environment May Cost Schools Federal Funds : Education: A government report, lobbied for by the NAACP, accuses the Centinela Valley Union High School District of tolerating harassment.

The U.S. Department of Education has concluded that a racially hostile environment has existed at the Centinela Valley Union High School District for the past several years and that administrators have not done enough to address the problem.

In a 20-page report released Wednesday, the department’s Office for Civil Rights said the district overlooked a pattern of highly publicized, racially tinged incidents that prompted a group of citizens to file a complaint with the department in the spring of 1990.

If the district fails to address its problems to the satisfaction of the Education Department, it could lose its federal funding, which amounts to about $1.2 million out of a total district budget of $27 million.

The complaint referred to 15 incidents of racial harassment at the district’s two high schools between 1987 and 1990, including verbal abuse, physical attacks and dissemination of offensive literature, according to the Education Department. After the investigation began in 1990, other incidents occurred at the district, which serves Hawthorne, Lawndale and Lennox.

“Although the district knew of the racially hostile environment that had been created for its students and employees, it failed to take adequate responsive steps to redress the racially discriminatory atmosphere or to prevent future incidents,” said the report by John E. Palomino, regional civil rights director in the department’s San Francisco office.

Evidence of the poor racial climate included a student walkout in March, 1990, in support of Hawthorne High School’s black principal, who was targeted for demotion, and interracial fights that erupted at Hawthorne and Leuzinger high schools in mid-1991.

“This report vindicates our claims,” said Shannon Reeves, western regional director of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, which pressed for the investigation.

Reeves said the group may use the report to buttress claims that black employees in the district have been denied promotions.

Joseph Carrillo, district superintendent for the past six months, said Thursday that the district would work with the Education Department to correct any problems. The 6,000-student district is 56% Latino, 18% black, 11% white, 12% Asian and Pacific Islander, and 1% American Indian.

The school board is reviewing the report and plans to respond within the 10 days that is required by the Education Department, said school board President Pam Sturgeon.

“The board will do everything in its power to follow the spirit and intent” of federal civil rights laws, Sturgeon said, reading from a prepared statement. “As far as I’m concerned,” she said, the district does not currently have racial problems. “We have gang problems, but I don’t think we have racial problems.”