Altadena Schools prepares for next step

It's been a busy couple of weeks for Altadena Schools, the collection of some 150 volunteers who are hoping to create an Altadena Unified School District: the organization says it has mailed out over 10,000 postcards in a recent direct mail campaign and put 75 new yellow and black signs around town.

And, most significantly, the organization has submitted 7,000 signatures to the Los Angeles County Office of Education on a petition to form the proposed school district.

But Altadena Schools is already thinking ahead, according to chief petitioner Bruce Wasson: "In the next couple of years, after the feasibility study, we need to find the kind of people who will pull papers for the board, and run for the board."

All public schools in Altadena presently belong to the Pasadena Unified School District.  Altadena Schools says that the academic proficiency of PUSD students "rank among California's bottom third," and that the district's predominantly low income students "are further burdened by a 140 point academic achievement gap between themselves and their middle-class peers." 

AUSD's supporters say that putting together a school district made up of top administrators can attract top teachers and thereby reduce the gap.  According to their literature, the goal is "Every Child To and Through College by 2020."

AUSD supporters say that "there are schools across the USA that actually accomplish the hard work of preparing their low-income student majorities for success in college: almost 90% of these schools' bottom-income-quarter students choose to go on to college, significantly more than the 70% nationwide matriculation of top-income-quarter students."

And one of the first steps, Wasson said, is to attract the right kind of board members who could make this happen. 

"It's totally obvious that we have a wealth of talented people with the appropriate skills to run for the board," Wasson said.  But for now, he said, "we're just waiting for the registrar to come back and tell us we have the signatures we need."