Judge Hits Pasadena Schools

A federal judge Monday barred the Pasadena school district from using race, ethnicity and gender as factors in admitting students to three schools, and then blasted officials for the district’s low performance.

U.S. District Judge Dickran Tevrizian declared that the district’s policy served no compelling government purpose and violated both the state and federal constitutions.

But Tevrizian went beyond the immediate legal issues of the case to lambaste school district authorities for Pasadena’s “abysmally” poor showing compared to other California public schools in recently released ratings.

The district, he said, “should be utterly and completely ashamed of its apparent inability” to provide students with an education equal in quality to neighboring San Marino, South Pasadena and La Canada.

Virtually all schools in those three surrounding communities were ranked in the top 10 percentile statewide, Tevrizian said, while only one of Pasadena’s 27 schools scored that high.

The Pasadena Unified School District serves 24,000 students from Pasadena, Altadena and Sierra Madre. Like Los Angeles city schools, it has suffered the effects of white flight. As of last year, enrollment was 48% Latino, 31% black, 16% white, and 5% Asian and others.

Tevrizian said school officials would be better off applying themselves to providing all students--regardless of race, ethnicity or gender--with good teachers, equipment and support staff, as well as a clean and safe environment.

“Well meaning and well intended social policies that continue to classify students on the basis of race, gender and ethnicity perpetuate rather than eliminate class conflict and undermine the concept that all men and women are created equal,” the judge concluded.

Tevrizian acted on a suit by five parents after the district adopted new procedures for entry to Don Benito Elementary School, Marshall Fundamental Secondary School and Norma Coombs Alternative School.

If applicants exceeded available slots at the schools, preference was given to the siblings of students already enrolled. After that, a computerized lottery system decided who got in. Factored into the lottery was an applicant’s race, ethnicity and gender. The school district said those factors would be used only if a school was on the verge of becoming segregated.

The parents charged that the policy violated the U.S. Constitution’s equal protection clause as well as California’s Proposition 209, the state measure that eliminated racial preferences in education, hiring and contracting.

One plaintiff, Rene Amy, a 40-year-old father of two children, hailed Monday’s ruling as “a win for the community.”

Maree Sneed, whose Washington, D.C.-based law firm, Hogan & Hartson, represented the school district, said Tevrizian was wrong to compare Pasadena’s test scores with those of more affluent San Marino, South Pasadena and La Canada.

The Pasadena district, she said, has a high percentage of students who are poor, who speak English as a second language and who move often. When compared to districts with similar socioeconomic populations, she said, Pasadena looks much better in the rankings.

She said Tevrizian’s strong criticism “only harms the district more” by effectively encouraging people to pull their children out of the Pasadena public schools.