Burbank High’s Progressive Principal Demoted by School Board : Personnel: Keiko Hentell encouraged multiethnic groups at the school. Officials won’t discuss the action.

The principal of Burbank High School has been demoted to English teacher, in a move made by the Burbank school board behind closed doors.

Neither board members nor top administrators would discuss the reasoning behind the decision announced at the close of Thursday night’s meeting of the Burbank Unified School District Board of Education.

But some teachers and community members speculated that Keiko Hentell, principal since 1991, was being replaced at least partly because of her progressive policies in encouraging multiethnic groups at the school.

“There were some programs in place which Burbank, not traditionally a minority’s school, might not have been ready for,” said Jack Kemp, a health teacher at the school.

“I am in a state of shock. I think we had a lady who was taking the school in a direction that was very positive.”

Hentell said Friday she was told by Supt. Arthur Pierce on Feb. 4 that her contract would not be renewed. Because she had recently received tenure in the district, the board had to offer her a teaching position in the fall, she said. She will continue to serve as principal until the end of the school year.

“Although you have attempted to address the needs of the increasingly diverse student body at Burbank High School, the decision-making process and relationships within the community at large need considerable improvement,” Hentell said Pierce wrote to her in a memo.

District officials refused to comment Friday. “It’s a personnel issue and I can’t discuss it,” board President Elena Hubbell said.

When Hentell joined the district three years ago from a job as an assistant principal at University High School in Los Angeles, she inherited a school that was becoming increasingly more diverse with growing Latino, Armenian and Asian populations.

The school traditionally had had a large white enrollment. But now, white students are barely in the minority at 48%. Latinos make up 39% of the student body; blacks 3%, and 7.4% are Asian.

Advocates for ethnic diversity have applauded Hentell’s efforts to work with the groups.

“I think it’s a tragedy, without a doubt,” the Rev. John Simmons, a retired Lutheran minister and head of the Burbank Human Relations Council, said of the board’s action.

The council was created to promote understanding among ethnic groups, and Hentell had asked for its help in solving many of the growing racial tensions she found at the school.

“We applauded it when she came here and we have applauded her ever since she arrived,” Simmons said.

Under Hentell’s leadership, student groups formed to promote ethic culture and Latino groups and other programs were encouraged.

Hentell said she also focused on decentralizing decision-making at the school, involving students, parents and teachers in the process.

“In the absence of any direction from the board, I had no choice but to forge a new direction,” she said.

Hentell said she will seek employment elsewhere.