Tuesday, October 6, 2026

Citing ‘Hurt Across Our Community,’ PUSD Superintendent Calls for Shared Vision Before Debating School Closures

Pasadena Unified Superintendent Dr. Elizabeth Blanco address members of the school district community during an in-person town hall on Monday, Nov. 11, 2025. [Eddie Rivera/Pasadena Now

In a letter ahead of Thursday’s special Board of Education meeting, Dr. Elizabeth Blanco acknowledged shortcomings in the district’s recent school consolidation process and wrote, “We can do better”

Pasadena Unified School District Superintendent Dr. Elizabeth Blanco wrote in a letter to the community Monday that the district must start with a larger question about what students’ learning and the district’s education system should look like before debating whether some schools should close, ahead of a special Board of Education meeting Thursday.

At that meeting, Blanco wrote, the board will consider next steps in the district’s transformation plan and will hear from the district’s demographer about enrollment projections, along with how a shared vision can guide the decisions ahead and a proposed process to engage the community in “co-designing and co-constructing PUSD’s future.”

“It has been difficult to see people who care deeply about PUSD at odds and to witness the hurt across our community,” Blanco wrote. “It is time to begin healing and to move forward.”

The letter acknowledged shortcomings in the district’s recent school consolidation process.

“We moved into discussions about individual schools before building a shared understanding of the educational future we were trying to create,” Blanco wrote.

She added that the district did not always explain its information, criteria and decision-making process clearly enough, and that some people felt they were being asked to react to decisions rather than help shape the questions.

“We can do better,” she wrote.

Pasadena Unified began a long-term school consolidation planning process last December, when the board adopted a resolution setting minimum enrollment levels of 300 students for elementary schools, 400 for middle schools and 900 for high schools.

Board member Michelle Richardson Bailey moved to table that resolution indefinitely, saying staff needed time to reorganize after recent budget cuts, and board member Jennifer Hall Lee also opposed it, citing concerns about enrollment. An amended version passed.

The district formed the Superintendent’s School Consolidation Advisory Committee.

On June 25, the board adopted a resolution to initiate a district transformation process, rescinding and replacing its earlier resolution establishing optimal school sizes. The resolution’s preamble notes that the district had gone through the advisory committee process and a proposed equity impact analysis of potential consolidation scenarios “without accepting the report.” The resolution called for the board to discuss scheduling community engagement sessions, with community partners, to gather community values and a vision for PUSD over the next five to 10 years, and stated that student input would be prioritized. It also stated that the district was still facing operating deficits for the next three years and would need to make additional budget reductions.

In her letter Monday, Blanco wrote that the Eaton Fire “has profoundly impacted our schools and communities” and that evolving student learning, declining enrollment, ongoing budget pressures and decisions about schools and facilities “demand a thoughtful, honest look at PUSD’s future.”

Five Pasadena Unified campuses, three of them used by charter schools, suffered major damage in last year’s Eaton Fire.

“School consolidation may be one strategy among many to realize our vision, but it is not the vision, nor should it be treated as an end in itself,” Blanco wrote. Any proposal, she wrote, should be considered as part of a broader strategy and tested against its educational, equity, financial, operational and community impacts.

She also wrote: “When fewer students attend schools across the same number of campuses, it becomes harder to sustain stable staffing and equitable access to programs and services.”

Blanco wrote that students, families, teachers, classified employees, labor partners, school leaders, community organizations, civic partners and residents of Pasadena, Altadena and Sierra Madre should all help shape the district’s direction, and that the engagement must begin before recommendations are developed, offer more than one way to participate and make clear how feedback informs the work.

“I am not asking for your input at the end of the process,” she wrote. “I am inviting you to sit at the table and design this with us from the start.”

She wrote that the effort should build on the district’s Strategic Plan, Graduate Profile, Educational Master Plan and Local Control and Accountability Plan, and should turn aspirations into clear priorities, measures of progress and regular updates that let the community see whether the district is moving toward the future it describes.

“A shared vision will not remove disagreement or make every decision easy,” Blanco wrote.

Blanco closed her letter with a question: “What kind of PUSD do we want our children to experience 10 years from now?”

Meeting information

The special Board of Education meeting is listed on the district calendar for 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 8. The board’s regular meetings are held in the Elbie J. Hickambottom Board Room, Room 236, 351 S. Hudson Ave., Pasadena. Board meetings are livestreamed on KLRN Pasadena’s YouTube channel in English and Spanish.