Pasadena Seeks Vote on Expanding School Board

After reviewing a scathing report on the public schools, Pasadena’s City Council on Tuesday took the initial step toward placing measures on the November ballot asking voters to increase the size of the school board and require its members be elected from specific neighborhoods.

Shortly after midnight, the council voted unanimously to direct the city attorney to draft ballot measures that would increase the Pasadena Unified School District board from five to seven members, and replace the existing at-large election scheme with one using geographic districts.

Those ballot measures are among the recommendations in a report by a charter reform task force, which was commissioned in August to scrutinize operations of the 24,000-student district serving Pasadena, Altadena and Sierra Madre.

Council members said more school board members representing specific areas will increase accountability and allow better oversight of administrators.

“School board members are going to have to knock on doors in their neighborhood and answer to those neighbors,” said Councilman Paul Little.

Although the council has no direct authority over the district, it has the ability to propose ballot changes to the City Charter that governs the school board’s format.

And council members also claimed the moral high ground in urging changes within the school district.

“At least two of us have our kids in the schools. None of the school board members have children in the public schools,” Little said.

School board member Lisa Fowler said although she and her colleagues don’t agree with some of the task force’s recommendations, the district needs to consider why people see the need for such changes.

“We cannot turn a deaf ear to criticism, even unwarranted criticism,” she said.

In a memorandum given to council members earlier this month, the school board agreed to the idea of expanding its size but opposed forming geographic districts.

Council members have scheduled a final vote next month on whether to put the measures on the ballot. They asked the city attorney to include a third proposal requiring the school board president to make an annual State of the Schools address.

They also requested the city attorney to make preparations for an advisory referendum in which voters could endorse or reject the package of other reforms suggested by the task force.

The task force was formed amid growing concern about the public schools in the city that is home to Caltech, half a dozen Nobel laureates and much of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory staff.

The group’s report, titled “Why Not the Best?”, harshly criticized the district, portraying it as having too few credentialed teachers, too many administrators, poor student test scores and woefully inadequate oversight by the school board.

“These findings in our view are quite serious,” said Councilman Chris Holden, head of the 11-member task force.

Pasadena Unified--with its ratio of one administrator for every 13.4 teachers--is more top-heavy than all but two of 54 California school districts with 1,000 teachers or more, according to the report. The statewide average is one administrator for every 18.4 teachers, it said.

The 80-page report states that the district relies on too many inexperienced teachers--more than a third of them have emergency credentials, among the highest numbers in Los Angeles County.

The report also charges that district officials often seek to sidestep criticism about low test scores by arguing that they have a large number of students for whom English is a second language or who are economically deprived.

“It is of small comfort to residents in the [district] that the district’s low absolute scores compare well to districts with ‘comparable’ demographics, especially when those communities have fewer resources,” the report said. “The message that many parents say they receive is that the district has a fixed, low expectation for their children.”

The school board, the report added, has failed to follow through on recommendations from a 1996 report for improving district finances, has never conducted a management audit and has ignored state safety reports that Pasadena Unified campuses have more than twice the number of property crimes than the state average.

“The district is dysfunctional,” said Bart Doyle, a Sierra Madre councilman and task force member.

The task force made 49 recommendations to improve the district.

Beyond the charter amendments, the task force recommended the district should appoint a district ombudsman and create easy to understand budgets.

In a memorandum submitted to the city earlier this month, the school board criticized the task force report for making recommendations without consideration of costs or student privacy rights.

The board also questioned how the number of school board members was determined, the merit of geographic districts and need for an advisory referendum.

Some council members said in interviews Tuesday that an advisory referendum on an array of reforms is cleared needed.

“If this plan gets the overwhelming support of the voters of Pasadena Unified, it will be a mandate for change,” Little said.

The council, however, delayed voting to endorse the task force’s recommendations until a joint meeting with school board members could be held.

Council members expressed concern during Monday’s three-hour council discussion that only two of the five school board members, and none of the district’s administrators, attended the marathon session, which ended early Tuesday.

Councilman Steve Madison said: “If somebody was evaluating our performance, as a member of the community, I’d want to be there and speak to it.”