Centinela Schools Hit by Racial Bias Investigation : Employment: Justice Department looks into allegations that the layoffs of two black employees was discrimination.

The U.S. Justice Department has launched an investigation into alleged employment discrimination at the Centinela Valley Union High School District.

Questions about the district’s employment practices were raised by the Committee for Racial Free Education, a Los Angeles area community watchdog group, which charged that the district discriminated against two African-American employees, a teacher and a maintenance worker who were laid off last spring.

In a July 13 letter to the committee’s founders, Adrain Briggs and Lionel Broussard, Assistant Atty. Gen. James P. Turner said the Justice Department had already been investigating the district. Turner wrote that the department had begun its inquiry after seeing the results of another investigation of the school district by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.

That study, completed two months ago, said district employees and students were subjected to a “racially hostile environment” that district officials knew about and failed to rectify. The district is currently implementing a plan to correct the problems.

Julie Anbender, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, confirmed that it was reviewing whether the Centinela district has violated civil rights statutes. Anbender, however, said she could not comment on the scope of the investigation.

School board President Pam Sturgeon said she did not know the district was being investigated, and that the Justice Department’s letter was only recently brought to her attention. She said the investigation is unwarranted.

“There is not a school district in the state that is not having the same problems we’re having,” said Sturgeon. “It’s just that our problems make the news.”

The 5,500-student district has long been torn by racial conflicts.

In March, 1990, racial tension flared when 2,000 students walked out of classes in support of Hawthorne High’s black principal at the time, Kenneth Crowe, who had been targeted for demotion. Over the next several months interracial fights erupted at Hawthorne and Leuzinger high schools.

In the aftermath of the walkout, more than a dozen black employees filed discrimination complaints with the state Department of Fair Employment and Housing in 1990 and 1991. Most of the complaints were dismissed, withdrawn or settled.

Briggs and Broussard wrote to the Justice Department in June after two African-American employees, Leo Jackson, a maintenance worker, and Jimmy Ellis, a special education teacher, were laid off. More than 30 employee were laid off in the district during the 1992-93 school year. But Briggs and Broussard believe Ellis and Jackson were singled out because they are black.

Jackson, who had been with the district for seven years, said he believed he was targeted for dismissal after he complained that one of his supervisors used a racial epithet in his presence. He was one of six maintenance workers who received layoff notices last March. Jackson said none of the four workers who were reinstated on July 1 had more seniority than he.

Ellis, who joined the Leuzinger staff in 1991 as a special education teacher, also believes he was laid off because of his race.

Formerly a volunteer coach at Loyola Marymount, he became Leuzinger’s basketball coach two years ago. He organized the Olympian Players Parents Basketball Boosters Club, a group he describes as “an African-American support group.” The club, which grew to 30 members, also organized fund-raisers for the basketball team.

Ellis, a probationary employee, received his layoff notice March 15. The district reinstated 14 teachers in July, but Ellis was not among them.

“I found out there were four special education positions open at Leuzinger, and I was told by (Assistant Supt.) Bill Fowler that I had to reapply for my job,” Ellis said.

When Ellis asked Fowler why he had to reapply for his position, he said he was told: “That is what (Supt. Joseph) Carrillo directed me to tell you.”

Carrillo was on vacation, and Fowler was unavailable for comment.

Ellis said the teachers union has been supportive and has filed grievances on his behalf, which are still pending.

Sturgeon said that Ellis and Jackson were laid off, as were other employees, because of the district’s budget crisis. Reprisals, said Sturgeon, are not the issue.

“There were more than 30 (employees), some of them probationary, who were cut,” she said. “Now, I could understand if Ellis were the only teacher we cut under those conditions. But there were others who were cut.”