Mediators Convene at School to Ease Tensions

A week after an elementary school principal said he was beaten at his San Fernando Valley school by anti-white assailants, outside mediators descended upon the campus to begin what they said will be a long healing process.

Members of both the city and county commissions on human relations, along with Days of Dialogue, a group that specializes in dispute resolution, met in private Monday at Burton Elementary School in Panorama City with selected parents, teachers, staff members and administrators.

About 25 people, four of them parents, huddled in the school’s library for two hours to discuss what steps will be taken over the next few weeks to mend frayed relations at the school, where some Latino parents have been trying to have the principal replaced with a Spanish-speaking administrator. About 90% of the students at the school are Latinos.

The mediation group planned to reconvene today to continue its planning.

“This is a process that’s going to take some time,” said Assistant School Supt. John Liechty, who oversees instruction at Los Angeles Unified School District campuses in the San Fernando Valley. “We’re trying to get at all the issues.”

City and school officials said much of the discussion revolved around how to restore communication and trust between parents and staff.

“Communication clearly broke down here,” said Joe Hicks, executive director of the city Human Relations Commission, who described the meeting as “productive” and “respectful in general.”

Principal Norman Bernstein said last week that he was beaten unconscious by two men, at least one a Latino, as he arrived at the school early Monday morning. According to Bernstein, the men said to him, “We don’t want you here anymore, principal. Do you understand that, white principal?”

Police have no suspects, but have said that they are investigating the incident as a hate crime and are looking into the possibility that tensions at the school may have spilled over into the community and led to the attack.

Latino parents who had been seeking to remove Bernstein, saying he cannot communicate because he does not speak Spanish, vehemently denied any connection to the incident.

In a letter dated June 8, 1998, to Assistant Supt. of Operations Dan Isaacs, the parents identified 17 problems they had with their principal.

“Mr. Bernstein is not bilingual, therefore, he is unable to communicate effectively with many of us,” the parents wrote. “ . . . We, the parents of Burton Street . . . don’t want Mr. Bernstein to remain as our principal at Burton Street.”

The request for his ouster came after a series of meetings, first with Bernstein and then with regional school district administrators. Saying they were frustrated by a lack of response, the parents went to Isaacs.

A half-inch-thick stack of complaint letters, received from June to December, reveal a parent-staff conflict charged with racial overtones.

“Some staff members referred to us as illegals causing too many problems, and [said] that we should go back to our country of origin,” said a letter dated Dec. 7, 1998, and signed by 14 parents.

On Friday, more than 25 of Burton’s 41 teachers held a news conference in front of the school to declare their support for Bernstein, calling the effort to remove him the work of only five or six parents.