Pasadena Adopts Controversial Plan to Reduce School Busing

The Pasadena school board early Wednesday approved an initiative that will redraw school attendance zones to reduce busing and create more neighborhood schools.

After several months of public meetings, focus groups and board work sessions, Supt. Percy Clark’s initiative had evolved and expanded to include reopening a closed campus to accommodate elementary and middle school students; creating a math and sciences magnet at one middle school; building a new elementary school in the northwest section of the district; and drawing new attendance zone maps.

The plan will take effect next fall, reducing the number of students being bused from the northwest section from 2,300 to between 1,300 and 1,600. Busing, which was launched to end segregation, eventually will be phased out completely under the district’s plan.

The district hopes the plan will help attract back to the schools some of the 10,000 area children who now attend private schools.

The board approved the plan around 12:30 Wednesday morning, after two hours of public comment and two hours of debate.

Most of the school board’s concerns about the plan came from Esteban Lizardo, the only member to vote against it. He expressed concern that the district is placing too much emphasis on attracting new students and not doing enough for the mostly minority students in the densely populated northwest area. Those students make up about half of the district’s 23,500-student population.

“What does this plan do for the kids most deeply impacted by [the school board’s] lack of action for the last 32 years?” Lizardo asked. But his concerns were not enough to sway other members of the board.

“I think all of us have reservations, but either we go on this or we don’t,” said Mike Babcock, vice president of the board. “At the end of the day, it comes down to this: [Supt. Clark] is a professional. We hired him and this is what he thinks we should do. I support it.”

Babcock, Tommy McMullins, Susan Kane, Peter Soelter and Ed Honowitz voted for the initiative. Lizardo was the only member in opposition and one board member, Jacqueline Jacobs, abstained.

The initiative has been controversial in some communities because of fears that neighborhood schools would resegregate the district. Many parents also are concerned about parity in the schools.

“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to ride into Pasadena and take a look at schools in the east and look at schools in the west and see inequities there,” Jacobs said. “The word ‘neighborhood’ scares a lot of people. They’re looking around at their neighborhood and that’s why they’re worried about resegregation.”

Busing was launched in the Pasadena Unified School District in 1970 in an effort to create racially integrated schools.

Clark has emphasized in the past that he will keep diversity in the district by offering choice and magnet programs. At Tuesday night’s meeting, he said that distributing resources and qualified teachers unequally would not help the district achieve its goals.

Lizardo and some parents have questioned the district’s commitment to building the new elementary school and whether the money to do so will be available.

However, about half the speakers at the board meeting--ranging from parents to the president of the Pasadena NAACP--endorsed the superintendent’s plan.