Thursday, September 10, 2026

School Board to Consider Waiver Request After Missing State Classroom Pay Minimum by $11.4 Million

District staff report cites $15.9 million in fire-related spending among the reasons for the 2025-26 shortfall

The Pasadena Board of Education tonight will consider whether to ask the Los Angeles County Office of Education to exempt the district from a state classroom spending requirement it missed by $11.4 million in 2025-26, according to a staff report.

California Education Code Section 41372 requires unified school districts to spend at least 55% of their annual expenditures on classroom teacher and aide salaries. Pasadena Unified’s unaudited 2025-26 figure is 50.52%, 4.48 percentage points below the minimum, according to Board Report No. 21-B, submitted by Chief Business Officer Arik Avanesyans and approved by Superintendent Elizabeth J. Blanco, Ed.D.

The district’s application, which checks “Serious hardship to the school district” as the reason for the request, puts the deficiency at $11,401,607.87, based on a current expense of education of $254,500,175.78.

A hardship request calls for a written explanation, the district’s latest interim report and a multiyear projection for the current and two subsequent fiscal years that reflects the financial impact of meeting the requirement. Board President Tina Fredericks is the authorized official for the board’s certification that the application’s information is true and correct.

The report says the primary reason the district has trouble meeting the requirement is “increased expenditure in supplies, contracted services related to fire and State one-time funds and Special Education Non-Public Agency costs.”

In 2025-26, the district paid $15.9 million in fire-related expenditures and $3 million from one-time state funds for supplies and contracted services, the report states. Staff wrote that removing those costs would put the district at 55%. Without those costs, classroom compensation of $128,585,752.58 would equal 54.57% of the district’s $235,623,001.26 current expense of education.

Some state and federal funds could not be excluded from the calculation because they included instructional staff expenditures, although most of the expenditures were noninstructional salaries, according to the report.

The formula’s numerator includes only salaries and benefits of classroom instruction in the General Fund, leaving out other costs of educating students, including counseling and support services, intervention materials and textbooks, the report states. The denominator includes all General Fund expenditures but allows some exclusions, including expenditures for facility acquisition and construction, payments for transportation and non-public schools.

School Services of California data included in the report show 31.30% of unified districts did not meet the requirement in 2024-25, compared with 9.01% in 2012-13. In 2024-25, 57.53% of elementary districts and 25.35% of high school districts also did not meet their requirements. Staff wrote that given all the changes in how dollars are allocated to school districts and “the influx of one-time funding, it comes as no surprise that more districts are failing to meet the minimum percentages.”

If the waiver request is not submitted, is denied or is approved for less than 100% of the deficiency, the county office must designate an amount equal to the apparent deficiency in district expenditures from apportionments made to the district after April 15 in the fiscal year. That amount must be deposited in the County Treasury to the district’s credit but remain unavailable for district spending, and the County Superintendent must order the designated amount, or amount not exempted, added to the amount to be expended for classroom teachers’ salaries during the next fiscal year, according to the report.

The County Superintendent of Schools or a designee decides the request and can grant the exemption, grant a partial exemption or deny it, according to the state form.