Guest Opinion | Pablo Miralles: Coming Home

After 40 years I returned to Altadena, the place where I was raised for most of my childhood.

It’s been a joy to ride my bike down familiar streets and hike familiar trails with my 11 year-old son. But most of all, it’s been a pleasure meeting my immediate neighbors, Black, LatinX, Asian, white, mixed… I was home.

For the last few weeks, while taking my morning bike rides with my son, I began to notice lawn signs — signs announcing the graduation of a high school senior in the neighborhood.

I saw a few signs for the ‘local High School”, and my alma mater, John Muir. But there were many more for other PUSD High Schools, charters, and as expected, private schools.

Then I saw a sign for CV, Crescenta Valley. I wondered what had been the decision making behind choosing the multi-ethnic and economically diverse enclave of Altadena to raise their child, and then sending that child to one of the only majority white public schools in the area.

On June 3rd, I read a New York Times Op-Ed about how George Floyd and Officer Derek Chauvin had grown up in segregated neighborhoods and schools.

Though both Americans of a similar age, their experiences with housing, education and opportunity were so contrasting it was as if they were raised on different planets.

That got me thinking of Rodney King.

Rodney King attended Muir the same time I did, just a few years behind me. At the time, the PUSD was finishing a decade of court ordered desegregation. Racial achievement gaps were narrowing and a generation of children were living in an inclusive educational world.

One of the two LAPD officers that were eventually convicted in a civil case for King’s beating was Lawence Powell, a graduate of Crescenta Valley High School. King and Powell had also grown up in very different environments, though King’s was not segregated. In my opinion he had been sincere when he asked, “Can we all get along?” I feel he knew, from experience, that we could.

If the lawn signs are any indication; open enrollment, charters and greater economic disparity mean fewer children are sharing an educational experience.

At least with busing, I had the opportunity to meet and learn with other children who lived in almost every PUSD neighborhood, from Sierra Madre to San Rafael. And in the end, my neighborhood friends in West Altadena would almost always be Muir Mustangs. This was our community

Looking at all the lawn signs I wonder, where is the community now?

Pablo Miralles is the filmmaker behind the award-winning documentary film “Can We All Get Along? The Segregation of John Muir High School”