​California Court Says San Pasqual Academy May Stay Open for Now

Following the filing of a lawsuit by San Pasqual Academy stakeholders - residents, alumni, and staff - the San Diego Superior Court is allowing San Pasqual Academy to remain open while the case goes to trial. In an order issued on December 3, 2021, Judge Robert Dahlquist granted a preliminary injunction “restraining and enjoining the State from terminating the group home license” for San Pasqual Academy.”

The lawsuit was filed in August 2021, when the County of San Diego Health & Human Services Agency and the California Department of Social Services tried to unlawfully shut down the nationally preeminent boarding school for high-school foster youth. San Pasqual Academy is a highly successful foster care program in Escondido, California, long relied on by the county for quality placements.

San Pasqual Academy was founded in 2001, when local philanthropists and nonprofits teamed up with the County of San Diego to purchase a former private boarding school, tear down its dormitories, and convert it into a first-of-its-kind home for foster youth. Today, San Pasqual Academy is an innovative comprehensive residential educational program for youth in the foster care system that has the statistically best results for such youth across all measurable categories.

According to the Harder + Company focus group report commissioned by San Diego County and conducted in the fall of 2021, nearly all of the program’s alumni universally support maintaining San Pasqual Academy as a home for foster youth.

These results align with another recent comprehensive survey of San Pasqual Academy’s two decades of serving foster youth. That report was spearheaded by Dr. Gail Goodman, psychologist and Director of the Center for Public Policy Research at University of California Davis. Goodman reports that “San Pasqual Academy’s residential program for foster youth is a preeminent program providing the best care possible for the population served.”

The conflict grew out of California’s Continuum of Care Reform Act, passed in 2015, which was meant to reform the state’s foster-care system. Relying on that act, both California and San Diego County erroneously determined that San Pasqual Academy was required to shut down. However, a specific provision in that act, Section 121, authorized San Pasqual Academy to keep doing its good work.

In his Superior Court order, Dahlquist wrote, “both the State and the County have misinterpreted Section 121. Under Section 121, the State has the obligation to determine or create a licensing category that would permit the San Pasqual Academy to continue to operate…The State has not complied with this obligation. By entering into an MOU (memorandum of understanding) which is based on a misinterpretation of the statute, the County is complicit in the failure to follow the requirements of Section 121.”

“This is an amazing result for any kids hoping to transfer into San Pasqual Academy,” exclaimed Tia Moore, the on-site residential director of San Pasqual Academy and part of the group suing the state and county. “The Academy is not for every kid, but it needs to be an option for foster youth in San Diego County.”

Also part of the lawsuit, Natasha Strain is a childcare worker at San Pasqual Academy and 2005 alumna. “When I first started working at San Pasqual Academy, I remember thinking that I was ‘normal,’ that I wasn’t like a lot of these kids,” she recalled. “But thinking back, I came to San Pasqual Academy as an angry kid. I was always angry, and I took my anger out on my house parents. Each person has something, whether it’s depression, anger, emotions - but I needed, and these kids still need, a place to help mold them into something better.”

“We are very pleased with the result we got from the Superior Court,” shared attorney Charles LiMandri, partner at LiMandri & Jonna LLP. “Although this is only a preliminary order, we are optimistic that we will be able to push forward and make sure that San Pasqual Academy - as Section 121 specifically allows - is able to stay open as a home for California’s most disadvantaged youth.” LiMandri and his co-counsel, Jeffrey Trissell, are leading the legal team for those suing to keep San Pasqual Academy open.

Trissell noted, “The preliminary injunction represents a win for common sense over bureaucracy. When literally everybody wants the Academy to stay open, and the law says it can, let’s just keep it open.”

Read the Minute Order granting the preliminary injunction issued by Judge Robert P. Dahlquist of the Superior Court of the State of California County of San Diego - North County Division on December 3, 2021, to attorneys at LiMandri & Jonna LLP, in Natasha Strain et al. v. Kimberly Johnson, Director of the California Department of Social Services et al. here.