Friday, June 12, 2026

Pasadena School Board Ends Its Closure Consultant’s Contract, But Leaves the Underlying Plan in Place

Two weeks after rejecting a consultant’s school-closure report, the Pasadena Unified board voted Thursday, June 11, to terminate the firm’s contract. Yet the resolution that authorized the right-sizing effort remains on the books — and parents warned the closures could “come back from the dead.”

Two weeks after rejecting a consultant’s school-closure report by a 6-to-1 vote, the Pasadena Unified School District Board of Education went a step further on Thursday, June 11, and moved to cancel the consultant’s contract altogether — while stopping short of repealing the resolution that set the closure process in motion in the first place.

The board terminated its agreement with Total School Solutions (TSS), the firm hired to study school closures and consolidation.

The vote came after a procession of speakers — the entire final round of public comment, and much of the opening round of 21 — pressed the board to do two things: cancel the contract with TSS and rescind Resolution 2852, the policy that set the district’s current “right-sizing” effort in motion.

The distinctions — between killing a report, killing a contract and killing the resolution to close schools — was the night’s central tension, and speakers named it precisely.

“I thank you for your recent six-to-one vote to reject the TSS consultant’s recommendation on school closures,” said a Thurgood Marshall parent who identified himself as Jeff, addressing trustees on the contract item. “Please terminate this TSS contract. I don’t want to see that bad course of action come back from the dead.”

Lisa Kroese, another district parent and former School Board candidate, urged the board not to let the effort return in any guise.

“I hope that it will not come back again in some other form,” she said. She pointed to the district’s own record: “When we closed Wilson in 2019, now there’s a charter school there.”

A rejected report, then a terminated contract, but the authorizing resolution remains intact

The board’s 6-to-1 rejection of the Total School Solutions report on May 28 was already a turning point in a controversy that has consumed the district for months.

The 104-page analysis, framed by the district as an equity-impact study, had floated scenarios including the consolidation of Blair and Thurgood Marshall high schools and the reassignment of Blair students to Octavia Butler.

But rejecting a deliverable is not the same as ending the engagement that produced it, and opponents of any school closures arrived Thursday determined to close that gap.

A number urged the board to go further and unwind Resolution 2852 itself. Adopted on a 4-to-3 vote in December 2025 under the title “Establishing Optimal School Sizes,” the resolution originally set minimum enrollment targets for each type of campus, directed the superintendent to flag schools that fall below them for possible closure or consolidation, and required both an outside study and an equity-impact analysis of any such plan — the very framework that produced the Total School Solutions work.

As long as that resolution remain effective, opponents argue, closures remain on the table no matter how the May 28 vote went.

“Please rescind Board Resolution 2852 and cancel TSS’s contract and find better solutions,” said another parent, who noted that the district “has tried closing schools four times” without resolving its finances.

The most immediate pressure on Resolution 2852 is not the budget calendar. A group of parents who contend the board violated the Brown Act has demanded that trustees rescind the resolution by June 14 — this Sunday — or they will file a lawsuit.

In the end, the board canceled the contract but the resolution was not on Thursday’s agenda and was not acted upon.