Parents Lose Bid to Leave Pasadena School District

The last, slim hopes held by a group of Sierra Madre parents fizzled Friday when the State Board of Education voted unanimously to deny their petition to leave the Pasadena school district and join the Arcadia district.

“All of us are pretty darn tired. It’s been a lot of hard work,” said Suzanne Levoe, who headed the effort, claiming that children’s education was suffering due to declining test scores, apathetic teachers and violence in the Pasadena Unified School District.

The district, whose 21,590-member student body is 79% minority, scores near the bottom third in reading and the bottom quarter in math on standardized tests. Arcadia Unified has 7,546 students, the majority of them white or Asian. The district scores in the top 15% or better on standardized state tests.