It’s peak season at the more than 50 private schools in the Pasadena area

Sitting with dozens of other eager parents in the Pasadena Christian School library late last month, Joyce Amaro listened carefully to officials describe the application process. The Alhambra resident wants to choose the best school for her son, and in the competitive world of Pasadena private schools, she wants that school to choose him, too.

“It is a lot of pressure to make the right decision,” she said.

Amaro is ahead of the curve – her boy won’t start kindergarten until the fall of 2013.

For families hoping to secure a spot at one of Pasadena’s private schools, February is peak season. By the early part of the month, parents must complete site visits, applications and screenings for their children’s social and academic development.

With all notification letters for the following fall to be mailed on March 9 – school heads meet once a year to agree on the shared date to reveal their rosters – admissions directors are reviewing applicants in an effort to compose the ideal class while parents wait by the mailbox.

“The day people get their letters the phones start ringing off the hook among parents,” said Christina Simon, a Los Angeles resident who writes for the private school blog Beyond the Brochure. “Everyone wants to know what happened.”

More than 50 private schools operate within the boundaries of the Pasadena Unified School District, according to the California Department of Education. Nearly two dozen more are based in nearby La Cañada Flintridge, San Marino and South Pasadena.

Tuitions range from $4,400 a year for elementary students at Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary School to $28,950 a year for high school students at the tony Polytechnic School. For many local families, as well as some in nearby Eagle Rock, Silver Lake and Los Angeles, private schools are the only option, despite the price.

The private school phenomenon in Pasadena is rooted in the affluence of the city’s founders and was buttressed by white flight from the Pasadena Unified School District in the 1960s and ‘70s, according to observers. The families that want in want in, despite what some describe as a grinding application process.

James McManus, former headmaster at Mayfield Senior School and now executive director of the California Assn. of Independent Schools, said that nearly 30% of Pasadena children attend private schools, roughly triple the statewide average.

“It is an unusually high concentration of independent and private schools compared to most other parts of the country,” McManus said. “The [private school] philosophy has been alive and well in Pasadena for over 100 years. It is kind of in the city’s DNA.”

Private school officials said they have worked in recent years to minimize the pressure on prospective families. In 2007, nine schools, including Mayfield Junior, Chandler, Polytechnic and Walden, adopted a common developmental screening program for kindergarten and elementary school admissions.

“In the old days it was really less friendly for the families,” said Merrily Dunlap, co-founder of San Marino-based Integrated Learning Solutions, the company that administers the $130 assessment. “If they were applying to five schools, they literally had to screen at each school, which is stressful for the kids and the parents.”

Dunlap declined to describe details of the assessment, but said it resembles a play date. Afterwards, Dunlap’s firm streamlines the process by mailing results to all the schools the parents request.

“I am hoping that it has worked, and that parents aren’t running around spending money tutoring 4-year-olds,” she said.

Still, applying to private schools in Pasadena is similar to the college admissions process, according to parents.

The mother of a current Polytechnic kindergarten student, who asked to remain anonymous to avoid jeopardizing the admissions chances of her younger children, employed different strategies while pursuing four schools. She created a spread sheet containing all relevant deadlines for the different schools and sent her husband on site visits with the hope that their daughter would be less likely to cling to him.

“By the fourth [visit], we had to beg her to go,” the mother said. “She had had it. She was fed up.”

The use of tutors and education consultants in Pasadena is unusual, though not unheard of, observers said.

“Sometimes we will get an application that is clearly written by somebody else other than the family,” said Azizi Williams, admissions director at Sequoyah School. “That is discouraging. We definitely want families to be writing themselves, and not have someone write on their behalf.”

When a child is denied admission or wait-listed, it is hard for parents not to take it personally. Eagle Rock resident Emilie Beck, the parent of two students at Waverly School, said she was befuddled when her eldest son was accepted at Waverly but wait-listed at Sequoyah, while her friends’ son was accepted at Sequoyah and wait listed at Waverly.

“It goes very deep in all of us, this need to be accepted,” Beck said. ”Then if you are not, and it is the kids who are not, it is a crazy-making kind of thing.”

The Poly kindergarten mom said she did her best to steer clear of the parent-to-parent speculation about who would get in where. She also said she is happy with her child’s school and that the hassle of the admissions process was well worth it. She has stored away all her application materials until it is time to repeat the process with her younger children. But she is in no rush.

“I am not looking forward to having to go through it again,” she said.