Monday, June 22, 2026

Guest Opinion | Calmatters’ Dan Walters: California Turns to Minimum Wage Hikes to Offset High Living Costs. There’s a Downside

By Dan Walters, CALMATTERS

There are three immutable aspects of economic life in California today.

No. 1, Californians face the nation’s highest cost of living. It is 11% higher than the national average, according to the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis, including rents 53% higher than average and utilities 63% higher. It’s why California also has the nation’s highest poverty rate.

No. 2, the high cost of living, especially for housing, is the most important factor in the out-migration of Californians to other states. It has led to a net loss of 900,000 people since 2015, according to the Public Policy Institute of California.

No. 3, California’s unemployment rate, currently 5.3% of its labor force, has been among the highest of any state for the last half-decade, with more than a million jobless workers. It rises to 10.1% when it’s broadened to discouraged job seekers and those who work part-time but want full employment.

Monday, June 22, 2026

Air Quality Advisory Covering Pasadena Extended Through Monday as Boyle Heights Fire Smoke Lingers

Air quality across the San Gabriel Valley, including Pasadena, remained under a particle pollution advisory Monday as smoke from a stubborn Boyle Heights warehouse fire continued to drift across the region, the South Coast Air Quality Management District said.

The agency extended the advisory — which it stressed is not a shelter-in-place order — through 12:30 p.m. Monday, June 22, after fine-particle pollution reached levels rated “Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups” to “Very Unhealthy” since Saturday night across central Los Angeles County, the San Gabriel Valley, the eastern San Fernando Valley and the northwest San Bernardino Valley.

For Pasadena-area residents, recent readings have hovered in the Moderate range on the federal Air Quality Index, with fine particles the main pollutant, though levels can rise and fall quickly as winds shift the smoke.

The district’s Monday-morning forecast called for smoke impacts north and east of the fire, including the San Gabriel Valley.

The AQMD advised people in affected areas to limit exposure by staying indoors with windows and doors closed,

Monday, June 22, 2026

PUSD Twilight Adult Education to Hold 2026 Graduation in Pasadena

The district’s evening adult program marks its graduates in a June 22 ceremony at Wilson Auditorium, separate from PUSD’s high school commencements

Pasadena Unified School District’s Twilight Adult Education program will hold its 2026 graduation ceremony at 3 p.m. Monday, June 22, at Wilson Auditorium, 300 Madre Street, according to PUSD announcements.

The ceremony is separate from the district’s five high school commencements, which were held June 3 and 4 at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium. PUSD includes the Twilight ceremony in its official Class of 2026 recognition.

Twilight Adult Education is a PUSD program offering evening instruction for adults, with pathways toward a high school diploma, literacy and English-language skills, U.S. citizenship preparation, and workforce training. The program operates on the district’s Wilson Middle School campus, where 2025 was its first year, according to PUSD.

PUSD’s broader 2026 graduation season follows the January 2025 Eaton Fire, which destroyed five district campuses in Altadena and displaced thousands of students.

For more information,

Monday, June 22, 2026

Guest Opinion: Dianne Lewis | When Students With Disabilities Become Invisible: A National Warning and a Local Test

The Pasadena Unified School District Board of Education votes June 25 on its 2026–2029 accountability plan. The stakes are local, but the moment is national.

This week, the federal government shifted day-to-day management and administration of federal special education programs from the Department of Education’s Office of Special Education Programs to the Department of Health and Human Services, while statutory responsibility under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act remains with the Department of Education. The move has prompted concern among advocates, former education secretaries from both parties, and members of Congress who argue that children with disabilities have a legal right to be educated, not simply treated.

That national debate arrives in Pasadena at exactly the right moment. Because embedded inside Pasadena Unified’s own accountability plan is a quieter version of the same risk: when students with disabilities are absorbed into broader goals, their outcomes become harder to see.

According to the district’s publicly posted proposed 2026–2029 Local Control and Accountability Plan,

Monday, June 22, 2026

The National Weather Service Warns of Rising Highs Through Thursday Before Cooler Conditions Return by the Weekend

A significant heat wave will grip Pasadena beginning Monday, with temperatures climbing into the 90s by midweek, forecasters said. The National Weather Service reported the warming trend will peak Wednesday, bringing above-normal afternoon highs and a slight chance of showers.

Today’s high is expected near 82 degrees under partly sunny skies, with light southwest winds shifting south-southwest at 5 to 10 mph. Overnight lows will fall to about 63 degrees.

Temperatures will rise Tuesday to near 89 degrees and reach about 91 degrees Wednesday. Winds will remain light, generally calm in the mornings and increasing slightly in the afternoons. Forecasters said mid-level moisture Wednesday could trigger isolated showers, though rainfall amounts will be minimal.

The warming trend will ease Thursday, with highs near 88 degrees. Cooling continues Friday through Sunday, with highs dropping to 85 degrees Friday, 83 degrees Saturday and 78 degrees Sunday. Overnight lows will range from the upper 50s to mid-60s.

Winds across Pasadena will stay light,

Monday, June 22, 2026

Guest Opinion | Michelle Matthews: Trees Are Not the Problem

Across eleven Pasadena Unified campuses, 193 mature trees are scheduled to be cut down as part of the soil remediation that followed the Eaton fire. The district began the removals on June 11, and 16 trees have already been lost. I write as a parent whose son has attended four of these schools, including San Rafael, Jackson, and Eliot. The more closely I have looked at this, the clearer it becomes that the trees are being treated as the problem when the problem was never the trees.

The contamination did not come from the trees. It came from a catastrophic fire whose ecological effects we will be coping with for years to come, and the lead and other contaminants in the soil were deposited by that disaster, or in some cases were already present beforehand. The contamination was not exacerbated by the mature oaks that have shaded these schoolyards for decades. Those trees are among the few things still providing much-needed shade and habitat on these campuses, most of which are urban heat islands.

Monday, June 22, 2026

Five Chicano and Latinx Writers Come to Vroman’s for an El Martillo Press Reading

A Culture Clash founder and four poets, including Pomona’s second poet laureate, share one Pasadena stage June 26

A founding member of the Chicano performance troupe Culture Clash and four Latinx poets will read from their work June 26 at Vroman’s Bookstore, in an evening staged by the Los Angeles publisher El Martillo Press.

The reading and book signing, set for 7 p.m. at the Pasadena store, brings together a notably broad slate: playwright Herbert Siguenza alongside poets Lorna Dee Cervantes, Paul S. Flores, Sonia Gutiérrez and Ceasar K. Avelar. El Martillo Press, founded in Los Angeles in 2023 by poets Matt Sedillo and David A. Romero, publishes working-class and Latinx writers. “El Martillo” means “the hammer” in Spanish. The store asks that those attending consider buying a book.

The press built a national profile quickly. In its first years it published Flores’ We Still Be: Poems and Performances, which won the American Book Award in 2024. “We want to treat our authors the way we want to be treated,”

Sunday, June 21, 2026

An Altadena Coalition Turns a Half-Hour Toward Fire Safety and Recovery

The volunteer neighborhood group meets Tuesday on Zoom to walk residents through reporting, brush clearance and where to find help.

When Altadena’s neighborhood associations gather on Zoom Tuesday evening, the agenda reads like a snapshot of a community a year and a half into its recovery: how to report problems, how to clear brush as fire season deepens, and where to turn for help.

The Altadena Coalition of Neighborhood Associations (ACONA) meets from 7 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., with the session focused on community safety, fire preparedness and local resources. Residents can expect updates on reporting procedures, brush-clearance requirements and the organizations still working to support the area’s rebuild.

ACONA was established in 2010 as a volunteer umbrella group, a way for Altadena’s neighborhood associations and Neighborhood Watch groups to network and trade best practices. Since the Eaton Fire tore through the community in January 2025, the coalition has been convening more often — bringing county fire, sheriff’s and planning officials before open community audiences and tracking the slow machinery of recovery,

Sunday, June 21, 2026

City Warns of Smoke, Poor Air Quality as Boyle Heights Warehouse Fire Smolders Into Sunday

In a statement, the City of Pasadena recommended that residents with pre-existing medical conditions stay indoors as a regional air-quality advisory covering Pasadena remained in effect Sunday.

The City of Pasadena urged residents with pre-existing medical conditions to stay indoors over the weekend as smoke from a stubborn warehouse fire in Boyle Heights drifted across the city and the San Gabriel Valley, leaving air quality poor into Sunday.

In a statement issued Saturday, the city said smoke and the odor of smoke may be noticeable in the Pasadena area but that “there is no immediate danger to our community.” It advised individuals with pre-existing medical conditions to remain indoors, keep windows and doors closed and run an air purifier if available, and pointed residents to current readings at AirNow.gov.

The South Coast Air Quality Management District’s particle pollution advisory was in effect through 12:30 p.m. Sunday and covered the San Gabriel Valley, including Pasadena, San Gabriel and Pomona. Fine-particle levels had ranged from “Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups” to “Very Unhealthy” on the Air Quality Index across central Los Angeles County,

Sunday, June 21, 2026

On a Monday Evening in Altadena, a Conversation About How Octavia Butler Became Octavia Butler

Author Lynell George joins Fin Lee at the Altadena Community Center to trace the science-fiction visionary’s path to the page

The science-fiction writer Octavia E. Butler imagined entire worlds, but the harder act of creation, as she told it, was making herself into a writer. On Monday evening, the journalist and author Lynell George sits down at the Altadena Community Center to consider that long, deliberate becoming.

George, who wrote “A Handful of Earth, A Handful of Sky: The World of Octavia E. Butler,” will be in conversation with Fin Lee from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. Built from years inside Butler’s archive at the Huntington Library — her notebooks, her to-do lists, the hand-lettered affirmations she taped where her eye would catch them — George’s book reads less like a conventional biography than like a field guide to building a creative life from almost nothing.

The setting carries its own weight. Butler was born in Pasadena in 1947 and made her home in Altadena,