Poor School Performance, Racial Divide Addressed at PUSD Meeting

At Tuesday's meeting several members of the public noted while speaking in front of the board that one side of the audience was mostly made up of black parents and community members and one side was mostly made up of Latino ones.

Several members of the public charged that the board has been too focused on Latino students, with programs focused on improving the performance of Latino students, but none for black students.

The commentors included Joe Brown, the head of the Pasadena branch of the NAACP, and Joe Hopkins, a local attorney and publisher of the Pasadena Journal.  Gene Stevenson, a member of the Altadena Town Council and one-time PUSD board candidate, had also planned to speak.

Brown also said that black students are disproportionatedly singled out for discipline and under-represented in student achievement programs.

Hopkins charged the board with setting up academic acheievement programs for Latinos only, though he did not provide any details of what programs he was referring to.

Others also spoke about the importance of improving overall student achievement regardless of the student's ethnicity, and several speakers, both Latino and black, said they did not want to see a racial divide in the schools.  Many said they wanted to figure out a way to improve performance for all students.

Disappointment With the Board

There were also many who voiced deep disappointment with the behavior of some on the PUSD board.

But the same divide that has clearly shown up on the PUSD board also came up with commenters on Tuesday, with several Latino speakers saying they believed board member Ramon Miramontes and his supporters had been unfairly attacked both by people on the board and by Hopkins and other commenters in the black community.

According to one report in the Pasadena Sun, someone in the audience yelled at a Latino commenter to speak in English while she was addressing the board.  The Pasadena Star-News also covered the meeting with this report on Wednesday.

The sudden outbreak of public commenting on the PUSD issues appears to have been the result of several recent developments:

• The .  While Howard is black, one of his foremost critics have been from a local Latino advocacy group.
• A recent that divided the board along familiar lines: Phelps, Miramontes, and Kim Kenne voted against the movement to censure, while the others voted to have a hearing.  Phelps ultimately received a written reprimand in liue of a formal censure, but several commenters criticized the board for spending time on the conflict rather than focusing on student acheivement. 
• The feeling of some that Miramontes is inciting outrage against the board in the Latino community - Hopkins charged that Miramontes had met with supporters to prepare them for Tuesday's meeting after Hopkins announced he intended to "march" on the board with own supporters. 
• Test scores released earlier this year that showed a marked difference in Latino and black student achievement: the state's Academic Performance Index (API) scores for the district show that black students in PUSD on average received a score of 715, compared to 735 for Latino students, 858 for white students, and 913 for Asian students.  A score of 800 is considered proficiency level. As a whole, this year compared to last.

So for those of you who are PUSD parents or have been involved in the district, where do you think the district should go from here?  What policies can the board implement to handle these divisive issues while also addressing student performance?  How serious do you think these problems are?  Please let us know below in the comments.