Educator Settles Burbank District Sex, Race Suit : Courts: Ex-principal Keiko Hentell, who will resign without a payout, charged discrimination led to 1994 demotion.

Former Burbank High School principal Keiko Hentell has settled her sex and race discrimination case against the Burbank school district by agreeing to resign and to receive no compensation.

“We agreed to walk away from the lawsuit,” said Hentell, who is now a vice principal at Van Nuys High School in the Los Angeles Unified School District. “I won’t say I have lost. . . . We just put the matter to rest and I am perfectly happy to go on with my life.”

The district spent about $300,000 on lawyers and court costs in the case.

Hentell said she agreed to settle the case because some of the charges were dismissed and she couldn’t take the chance that the jury would find in the school district’s favor, which could have made her liable for district court costs.

The suit was filed in U.S. District Court a year ago, and charged that sex and racial discrimination played a role in Hentell’s demotion from principal to teacher in the Burbank Unified School District in March, 1994.

Testimony began in front of a jury last week. By Wednesday, the judge dropped the gender and national origin discrimination charges brought by Hentell due to lack of evidence, lawyers for the district said.

Additionally, four of the seven defendants were dismissed from the case because the judge ruled their involvement in the case was peripheral.

The lawsuit, which asked for unspecified punitive damages, had named the Burbank Unified School District, the district superintendent and individual members of the Burbank School Board as defendants.

The suit stems from a school board announcement in February, 1994, that Hentell’s contract as Burbank High School principal would not be renewed after it expired. In March, she was transferred to the district’s central office to write grants and was assigned a slot as an English teacher for the next semester.

The board gave no reason for its decision.

Hentell, a Japanese American, said she was demoted because of her ethnicity, sex and her close work with minority students at the high school--charges the school board has denied.

After four days of testimony, the parties settled the case over Labor Day weekend.

“They contacted us and indicated that they wanted to settle it,” said C. Anne Hudson, attorney representing the school district. “Basically there was no evidence submitted at the conclusion of her case.”

Hentell submitted her resignation letter and agreed to drop the remaining charges against board members Elena Hubbell, Joseph D. Hooven and Arthur N. Pierce for allegedly infringing on her First Amendment rights and right of association.

Both parties agreed to pay their own lawyer and court fees.

“There was no financial compensation,” said David Aponik, superintendent of the Burbank Unified School District. “Now she can focus on her job and her family and we can divert our energies on the children.”

Hentell said her lawyer was hired on a contingency basis and that half of her court costs will be paid by a private group of citizens who raised money for her cause. She declined to specify the amount.

“I am still working through what this all meant,” Hentell said. “What was done to me was wrong, and if you feel that you have been wronged you should at least make some attempt to make it right.”