Tuesday, August 18, 2026

Pasadena Unified Acknowledges Unfinished Cleaning at San Rafael Elementary as Students Return

District says areas open to students are safe after families reported dust and dirt on the first day of the school year

Pasadena Unified School District acknowledged Monday night that some of the final general campus cleaning and restoration work at San Rafael Elementary School had not been finished before students returned for the first day of classes, hours after parents contacted Pasadena Now to report airborne dust and dirt in areas used by children.

In a message to San Rafael families at 7:20 p.m., Superintendent Elizabeth Blanco and Michael Dunning, the district’s director of facilities, maintenance, operations and transportation, wrote that parts of the campus did not look or feel as finished as families reasonably expected on the first day of school.

“The playground structure was dusty, portions of the front walkway were covered with dirt, and restoration work remains visibly incomplete in several areas,” they wrote.

The underlying remediation and safety work, they wrote, has been completed or secured where necessary.

“Most importantly, the areas of campus currently open to students are safe for use,” Blanco and Dunning wrote.

Contaminated soil in those areas has either been removed or is contained within secured areas that remain closed to students, they wrote, and restoration areas where contaminated soil has been removed and restoration activities are pending are fenced off and not accessible to children.

Environmental testing after the Eaton Fire identified elevated levels of contaminants in portions of the soil at San Rafael, and the California Department of Toxic Substances Control determined that impacted soil needed to be removed and replaced to ensure the continued safe use of the affected areas, the district said. Rather than leave impacted soil in place until future construction, it said, it moved forward with remediation.

San Rafael is one of 11 Pasadena Unified properties where the district has been removing soil contaminated by the January 2025 Eaton Fire, a project covering approximately 8,000 cubic yards of impacted soil.

All contaminated soil has been removed from the campus or covered with a concrete or gravel cap in accordance with an Interim Mitigation Plan approved by the department, the district said. Testing was conducted after contaminated soil was removed and replaced with clean sand and soil.

Parents of San Rafael Elementary School students telephoned and wrote to Pasadena Now on Monday, raising concerns about conditions on the campus as students returned. The parents, who asked not to be identified, said soil-remediation work remained active, and said construction workers were present Monday in fenced remediation areas containing open excavations.

One parent said dirt associated with the remediation project appeared to extend beyond the fenced work zones and was visible on the playground, blacktop, outdoor classroom areas, lunch area and sidewalks used to enter the school. The parent said school officials previously indicated that work would stop when classes resumed.

The parents also reported seeing a maintenance crew use powered blowers to move dirt on the first day of school, generating what the parent described as a substantial amount of dust, and said the use of blowers appeared to disperse the material rather than remove it from areas accessible to students. The parent said security personnel were stationed around the campus after several parents contacted district officials about the conditions.

The parents expressed concern that the dust could contain lead or arsenic associated with soil contamination being addressed through the remediation project. The parent also criticized the removal of trees and green space from the campus during the summer, describing the current conditions as part of a broader dispute over how the remediation project has been managed.

The parents said the district had maintained that the construction areas were safely separated from students and had attributed some delays to issues involving the city. The visible dirt, ongoing work and dust, the parent said, raised unresolved questions about whether the campus had been adequately cleaned and confirmed safe before reopening. The parent’s observations and assertions regarding contamination have not been independently verified.

In its email, the district addressed several of those points.

Leafblowing was conducted in non-contaminated areas before school began Monday, it said, “per our standard operating cleaning procedures.” The stockpiled material on the playfield is clean, tested imported backfill sand approved by the department, not contaminated soil, and is being used to backfill the areas where impacted soil was removed. The open excavations are part of the restoration process and are located within areas closed to students, the district said, and equipment that had been on the blacktop was removed before school opened Monday.

During earthwork involving contaminated soil, including disturbance, excavation, handling, loading and transportation, the district’s environmental consultant, Verdantas, conducted air monitoring in accordance with South Coast Air Quality Management District Rule 1466, which requires continuous air monitoring and dust-control measures at designated cleanup sites. “According to the monitoring results provided to the District, there were no particulate or wind exceedances during contaminated-soil earthwork,” the district said. Monitoring logs through Aug. 15 have been reviewed.

On Saturday, Aug. 15, the area west of the A Building was washed down, leaves and debris were cleared from the ramp walkway between the blacktop and lower playground, and the lunch-table area outside the cafeteria under the shade structure was washed down, the district said.

Additional cleaning will continue this week, including washing down the entire lower playground and play structure, the front of the school and the adjacent sidewalk area.

Tree removal is only one step in the remediation process, the district said. After vegetation and other surface obstructions were removed, impacted soil was excavated, handled and disposed of appropriately, and the area then must receive remediation clearance before clean soil can be placed. Additional restoration work after backfilling can include irrigation, landscaping and replacement plantings.

Closed for backfill and restoration are the playfield, the street-side planter areas east of the A Building and the planter areas north of the B Building, the district said. Closed areas are fenced to keep children safe while restoration work is underway. The gravel cap has been placed along the southern boundary of the playfield under the Interim Mitigation Plan.

A large portion of the playfield will be reopened once restoration is completed later this school year, barring any unforeseen setbacks, the district said. As it has stated previously, an area on the southern edge of the field will remain closed for the entire school year.

The district said it worked throughout the summer to complete as much remediation as possible before students returned, calling it a complex process involving environmental testing and clearance, soil excavation and hauling, tree and stump work, contractor scheduling, restoration, and periods when work could not proceed as planned. “We would have preferred that every affected outdoor area be fully restored before the first day of school,” it said. Where that was not possible, it said, “students will have access only to areas that are safe for them, while work continues in secured portions of the campus.”

“This is understandably unsettling in the context of a soil-remediation project,” Blanco and Dunning wrote. “We should have done a better job making sure the condition of the campus reflected the extensive work that had already been completed.”

Restoration will continue in the closed areas of the campus, and the district said it will reopen additional outdoor spaces as they are completed and ready for student use. It said it is working to open the remainder of the playfield later this school year.