Students Hold Rally for Ousted Principal : Protest: Parents also attend demonstration urging reinstatement of Burbank High School’s Keiko Hentell.

Following the close of classes Tuesday at Burbank High School, a small cluster of students and parents gathered to wave signs and give speeches supporting Keiko Hentell, who is being forced out of her job as principal after three years.

“We call on the board to reinstate Keiko Hentell,” said Kimalica Guynes-Peters, a parent and an organizer of the Young Black Scholars student group at Burbank High. She was supported by a group of about 15 student supporters of Hentell.

Two weeks ago, the school board announced its decision not to renew Hentell’s contract, instead offering her a position as an English teacher.

Students, teachers and community leaders who support Hentell have speculated that Hentell’s removal was in reaction to her policy supporting ethnic groups and clubs at the high school. Others reject that theory, saying her management style fostered faculty dissension.

“It’s not an ethnic diversity issue,” Board President Elena Hubbell said Tuesday afternoon. “It’s absolutely not and I am tired of hearing that.”

Tuesday’s rally, at which students wore signs that read, “We’re Here 4 U Mrs. Hentell” and “We Love You,” and badges that used the words “People Respect Integrity and Diversity in Education,” for the acronym PRIDE, was expected to be a prelude to Thursday night’s board meeting, where her supporters are expected to demand that Hentell be reinstated.

But Hubbell said that the board would not reverse its decision. “We did not make this decision frivolously . . . and we stand together with this decision,” Hubbell said.

“We don’t make our decisions on one issue,” said Hubbell, who would not say why Hentell’s contract was terminated. “We make a decision on a combination of factors.”

Students at the demonstration spoke of Hentell’s “motivated, eager personality,” which they said had been a driving factor at the school for three years.

When the decision to release her became public, Hentell released a memo from Pierce that criticized her “decision-making process and relationships within the community.”

She said during an interview then that there had been personality problems among faculty members last year, but said “we solved the problem” this year. “As far as I knew, that goal was met. I found that this school year has been much more productive,” she said.

However, teachers who left Burbank High School at the end of the past school year were not surprised by Hentell’s removal.

“I was proud of the school board for having the courage to take this step, when it seemed likely that there would be a cry that discrimination and ethnic diversity was at issue,” said Julia Vetrie, an English teacher who said she transferred to John Burroughs High School because Hentell’s leadership style fostered faculty dissension.

“She infuriated quite a few people,” said Barry Silver, a Burbank High teacher who is on a leave of absence. “She had the faculty up in arms about seemingly trivial things.”