Pasadena Sued Over School Lottery

A group of parents sued the Pasadena Unified School District on Monday in an attempt to dismantle a new lottery system that uses ethnicity to help determine which children are admitted to some of the district’s best schools.

In the federal lawsuit, five Pasadena-area parents are alleging that the school district’s consideration of ethnic origin in admissions to three schools violates federal law requiring equal treatment regardless of race. They say that using ethnicity to help determine admissions also violates Proposition 209, a state measure eliminating racial preferences in education, hiring and contracting.

“Two years ago, Proposition 209 did away with racial preferences or discrimination in public education in California, but apparently the school district thinks it is above the law,” said plaintiff Sylvia Scott, a foster parent of six children of different ethnic backgrounds.

“This takes one back 30 years to when Pasadena schools fought racial integration all the way to the United States Supreme Court,” said Scott, who is African American.

In December, the Pasadena school district announced that it would replace its first-come, first-served placement system with a lottery for the coming fall at Don Benito Elementary School, Marshall Fundamental Secondary School and Norma Coombs Alternative School as part of a new district integration policy.

Under the new system, parents apply for their child to attend the voluntary schools by completing an application that requires them to indicate whether the child is Latino, white, black, Asian, American Indian or multiracial. Students are chosen at random by a computer program that factors in race and gender, according to school officials.

School officials have maintained that the system is designed to ensure that each school reflects the district’s diversity.

Enrollment in Pasadena Unified, which includes students from Pasadena, Altadena and Sierra Madre, is 31% black, 48% Latino, 16% white and 5% Asian and others.

School board member George Van Alstine said Monday that the district would defend its admissions policy in court if necessary. He withheld further comment on the suit because officials had not yet seen it.

Van Alstine announced the lottery system in December.

“When we looked at every school in the district, the voluntary schools were the ones that came dangerously close to skirting our own integration policy,” he said then. “We knew we had to come up with a new way to ensure balanced diversity that reflects the overall district’s students demographics at the voluntary schools.”

But plaintiffs George MacPherson and Sylvia Jimenez MacPherson said Monday that they wanted race to play no part in whether their 4-year-old son goes to Don Benito in the fall.

Rene Amy, a white parent of two who is also a plaintiff, said the tough math- and phonics-based curriculum at Don Benito should be available to every child.

“In essence, this district is using the color of the child’s skin to determine the education they receive,” he said.

The parents are being represented on a pro-bono basis by Kevin Snider of the United States Justice Foundation, an Escondido legal group.

“The district is conspiring to deprive these people of their civil rights,” Snider said.