DISTRICT TO NAME AUTHORS OF PROPOSED COURSES.

Byline: Karen Maeshiro Daily News Staff Writer

Despite critics calling it a ``witch hunt'' and the ``worst thing since Joseph McCarthy,'' high school trustees approved a plan to make public the names of teachers who write up proposals for new courses or course revisions.

Some teachers said they felt the move was an ``intimidation tactic,'' but trustee Kevin Carney, who made the proposal, said he wanted to provide the public and the news media greater access to information.

``My objective was not to target teachers, but assist the media and the public in their right to know,'' said Carney, who in recent months has joined with fellow trustee Sue Stokka in criticizing course proposals dealing with racism and U.S. medical history.

The Antelope Valley Union High School District board voted 3-1 at Wednesday's meeting to approve the plan. Trustee Wilda Andrejcik dissented, and board member Bill Olenick did not cast a vote. The policy will only deal with courses that are proposed from now on.

Participants said the portion of the meeting that dealt with the issue was rowdy and tense at times, with loud audience reactions. At one point Stokka, the board president, threatened to clear the boardroom, officials said.

Olenick had said earlier that such a plan would have a chilling effect in that fewer teachers would be willing to draft new curricula. He said he did not vote because he thought the issue required a second reading before final approval.

``We have a line of authority. I believe in teachers having that creative academic freedom to make proposals,'' Olenick said.

Quartz Hill High School English teacher Kathleen Parks said that teachers fear for job security. She has heard from teachers who say they will not write up course proposals under these circumstances.

``Things do become controversial, and everything in high school is potentially controversial because we have at least two board members who see it that way,'' Parks said. ``We don't know when they will go off in a different direction.''

Parks added, ``I think what's implicit in this whole time of controversy and politicizing of education, I think people rightly wonder if a person with a great deal of power, such as a board member, could influence decisions made about our positions.''

Carney said the plan would not affect teachers' jobs.

``They are reading more into this than there is. They are protected by tenure,'' Carney said.

Carney had said Tuesday that if a curriculum revision is so controversial that a teacher would not want his or name attached to it, then perhaps the subject matter is not appropriate for high school students.

In December Carney and Stokka criticized a course dealing with racism as potentially divisive and a matter better dealt with at home than in school.

The course, titled, ``Conflict Resolution/World of Difference,'' was proposed by staff at Littlerock High School as an elective for ninth- and 10th-graders and covered past incidents of intolerance. The course has not returned to the board for final approval.

More recently in February a proposed U.S. medical history elective course for juniors was sent back for changes by the board after Carney and Stokka criticized it as revisionist.

The proposed course took the U.S. history curriculum already approved by the board in 1990 and modified it to include medical issues, but the committee that modified it made changes to which Carney and Stokka objected.

For example, the 1990 course guide states that students will compare imperialism with the 19th century expansionist doctrine Manifest Destiny, while the proposal inserted ``American'' before the word ``imperialism.''