Friday, October 9, 2026

School Board Narrows ‘Transformation’ Definition, Picks Staff-Facilitated Community Committee

Trustees rejected a motion to set the work aside as the District’s enrollment consultants projected declines under every scenario they modeled

The Pasadena Unified School District Board of Education voted Thursday night to cut back its draft definition of a “District Transformation Process” to the first two paragraphs of the proposed language and to hand the work to a community committee facilitated by District staff, after first rejecting a motion to set the effort aside.

The decisions at the special meeting set how the Board will proceed under Resolution 2894, the measure that initiated the transformation process. Who will sit on the new committee, and how members will be chosen, remains open. No members or chair were named.

The approved definition, adopted through a substitute motion by Trustee Patrice Marshall McKenzie, keeps the draft’s opening statement and nine goals, among them equitable access to facilities and programs, increased revenue and enrollment, and aligning resources with enrollment.

It also keeps process commitments that include considering alternatives to school consolidation and evaluating “program realignment, co-location, consolidation, expansion, and other changes.”

It strikes the rest, including a list of decisions the Board would make at the end of the process. Trustee Kimberly Kenne had moved to approve the full draft reflecting the Board’s Sept. 3 edits.

On committee structure, Kenne moved to form a board subcommittee, saying that structure “worked well in 2019.” Trustee Michelle Richardson Bailey offered a community committee as a substitute.

“I served on the last committee six years ago, and I have to say it was a very traumatic experience,” Bailey said, adding that a board subcommittee would cause more tension between the Board and the community.

Marshall McKenzie seconded, asking that staff facilitate the committee’s process, and Bailey accepted. The substitute passed.

Board President Tina Fredericks said the committee would be advisory and that its process “has not been established.”

Earlier, Trustee Jennifer Hall Lee moved, with Bailey’s second, to table all six remaining discussion and action items. Bailey had asked colleagues to hold them until after a visioning process. The motion failed.

Trustees disagreed over whether visioning should come first.

“The fracture on the board needs to be healed before we move forward,” Hall Lee said.

Fredericks said she feels “a serious urgency.”

“There is a glacier that we’re about to hit or we have hit it,” she said, adding that “fewer schools would be fuller staff schools.” Kenne said the Board needs information that “tells us what our students need today, not 10 years from now.”

Superintendent Elizabeth Blanco backed the visioning approach presented by consultant Prospect Studio.

“So the process that was presented to you this evening is the process I’m recommending,” she said. She said she would put trustees’ specific questions to the community if they wanted. “But I’m not willing to call it visioning,” she said.

Responding to Trustee Yarma Velázquez, Blanco said schools voted for closure would not close in time to produce immediate money. “There’s still going to be layoffs. The budget is still going to come. This year is already rolling,” she said.

Asked by Kenne, the Prospect Studio presenter Sofia Lopes said the visioning process in Napa Valley Unified, the district the firm used as its example, came “a couple years after they closed schools.” Answering Fredericks later, she said she has no strong view on the sequence and that a district she is now working with is closing schools as its visioning begins.

The preliminary forecast from NDC, the District’s demographic consultant, projects enrollment falling from 12,676 this fall to 10,176 in 2036 in its medium scenario, about 20 percent. Its high and low scenarios project declines of about 10 percent and 35 percent. The fall figure rests on unofficial early-year headcounts; the firm said it will update the forecast with the official census count tallied Wednesday.

NDC’s presenters said even the firm’s most optimistic scenario shows enrollment declining. The firm said District enrollment has fallen by more than 10,000 students since its 2000 peak.

Velázquez said the Board “will have to make decisions that might imply layoffs in December.”

Blanco said the Board will be asked at its next meeting whether to authorize negotiations, the next step for the District’s Linda Vista property. Kenne said the Board must also make facilities master plan decisions next spring.