Monday, May 11, 2026

Guest Opinion | John Lira: PUSD needs a Holistic Progressive Vision for the Integrated, Fully-Staffed Model Schools of Tomorrow

John Lira is a 25-year veteran PUSD educator and sits on the board of the United Teachers of Pasadena

PUSD was recently gifted almost 1.5 billion tax dollars in bond measure money, Measure O (516M) in 2020, and Measure R (900M) in 2024.  The District gets almost 12 million annually from the passage of Measures I and J and an additional 5 million from Parcel Tax Measure EE, along with more money for the diverse population it serves, which means PUSD receives more money per pupil than all the districts that surround it.  With all this gifted tax and bond money, it must reimagine what PUSD will look like in 5, 10, or more years from now.  PUSD should use its unprecedented bond funding and local revenue not merely to manage decline, but to redesign the district around integrated, stable, fully staffed schools that provide equitable access and comprehensive educational opportunities.  It is time to prepare for a progressive vision for the integrated, fully-staffed model schools of tomorrow.

The History and Some of the Issues

PUSD was advised back in 2019 by Dr. Verdugo, the interim superintendent, without bias and being an outsider, to address the school closures of secondary schools (4:12) as part of its fiscal plan after that round of elementary closures, which also included Wilson Middle School.  That round of closures happened even though those were not all the schools recommended by the committee, and were all more socio-economically disadvantaged, serving more marginalized communities.  Marshall, Don Benito, Blair, and San Rafael, and other schools with more affluent populations were considered as well, but not closed over the protests of their respective communities.  The district was sued as a result and the case is now being appealed.  State law now requires that districts account for the disproportionate impact on these more marginalized communities of students.

Since the district kicked the can down the road, it is up against a time constraint, facing its current fiscal realities with declining enrollment that has been exacerbated by the recent fires. PUSD has been averse to closing schools and does not want to cut certain programs, even though those programs could be moved to schools that may remain open, going so far as to not entertain touching some of them during the consolidation process.  The district was supposed to do an efficiency study over 2 years ago that included the over 120 programs the district has and their return on investment in order to pare them down, but it has yet to be completed, and now it is forced to look at closures alone.  While no one wants to see school closures, they are an inevitable byproduct of expensive housing and declining enrollment, as the school district is projected to be closer to 10,000 students, with approximately 3,000 high school students by 2030. See: U.S. Schools Face a Crisis as the Number of Children Drops  However, before making some closures, there must be a vision for what the remaining schools will look like after the consolidations happen, especially regarding geographic location for elementary, an age group that is less mobile and needs more neighborhood schools or transportation; there must also be a plan in place for how they feed into secondary schools to ensure consistency and continuity across sites.  Unfortunately, due to the delay in addressing secondary school closures from 2019, paring down programs, and the decline in enrollment, they will be more likely this time around, as PUSD high school campuses together are underenrolled for a district of its size, and the money it will save by closing them is far more than that of an elementary school.

Being a good steward of funds for facilities is another issue.  PUSD has a history of closing schools that have received bond money in the past from both Measure Y in 1997 and TT in 2008. The board recently voted to do a total rebuild of San Rafael for 128M, which is over 25% of Measure O funds, 30% if you only count funds used for facilities improvement, not tech bonds, and/or about 15% of Measure R.  The original estimates from the facilities committee were significantly less than the 70-116M discussed at the meeting, but when it was brought to the school board, it rose to the approved 128M.

It is a significant gamble for the district to rebuild a school in an area where relatively few families with school-aged children live, particularly when few residents within the area actually attend their neighborhood school. Today, only about 10%, or approximately 40 of San Rafael’s 427 students, live within the immediate neighborhood attendance area. Investing heavily in a campus that may itself face future closure, while not fully considering the potential ripple effects on other schools that serve far larger neighborhood populations, may prove short-sighted.

One of the schools currently being discussed for possible closure is McKinley, which has lost more than 100 students to San Rafael. Over time, McKinley’s socio-economically disadvantaged population increased from roughly 40% to more than 80%, while San Rafael experienced the inverse shift, declining from approximately 80% socio-economically disadvantaged to about 34% today. These enrollment patterns were not random; they reflect the cumulative effects of open enrollment and school choice policies in a system where San Rafael does not have a traditional attendance boundary.

McKinley serves a more dense student area where many families can walk to school and benefit from a single drop-off location for both elementary and middle school students. It is also located in a part of the district with few nearby alternatives for neighborhood families. By contrast, San Rafael largely depends on families who are able to drive across the district, creating transportation barriers for lower-income communities, many of which have historically faced disinvestment and exclusionary housing patterns. The result is that some schools continue to lose enrollment, parent participation, and socioeconomic diversity, while the district becomes increasingly stratified along racial and economic lines. Today, few McKinley families know their school is even being considered for closure.

Given PUSD’s history of investing bond funds into campuses that were later closed or consolidated, it should give pause for concern that it may eventually face a similar situation as enrollment continues to decline. Without a comprehensive, updated long-term facilities and enrollment plan, the district may ultimately be forced either to reconsider San Rafael’s viability to remain open in the future or close other schools located closer to where larger numbers of students live to justify maintaining a campus that received a substantial $128 million investment.

Furthermore, some communities within PUSD have expressed concern that political pressure from elected city officials may have influenced the district’s decision to prioritize rebuilding San Rafael before completing a comprehensive long-term consolidation and updated facilities plan, post-Eaton Fire. These concerns are valid given that substantial resources are being directed toward a school located in one of the district’s more affluent areas, despite ongoing discussions about possible closures affecting schools that serve larger numbers of lower-income students.

The city’s involvement in advocating for the reconstruction project in an affluent area over others is surprising and appears inconsistent with Pasadena recognizing its history of housing segregation and racial exclusion, including recent city council discussions surrounding former Mayor Stewart’s role in promoting racially restrictive housing covenants that barred Black residents and other people of color from buying or occupying homes in Pasadena during the early 20th century.

As stated earlier, if history is any indicator, the decision to rebuild a school that may close will repeat itself and show that this may ultimately prove to have been a short-sighted decision, particularly given that the measure passed on a 6-1 vote, with Board Member Kenne voting no due to the concerns of PUSD being in a current consolidation process.

It was also surprising that some of the board members who are people of color, Black, Hispanic, and Asian, put a more affluent community’s building before others they may represent in other marginalized, redlined communities of PUSD and the children who may be harmed by this decision (e.g. Madison, Washington, McKinley all over 80% low socio-economically disadvantaged (SED) with an average of over 30% English Language learners compared to San Rafael’s 34% SED, 9% English Language learners.  San Rafael’s student body takes a majority of students from those 3 lower-SED schools, leaving those lower-SED students in those school communities without peer models and active parent support.

The fact that the school board is a majority body of women and people of color, along with a female, Hispanic superintendent, and still are not correcting past inequities and allowing PUSD to resegregate under their watch, shows how deeply rooted this history and unconscious bias are, even when all the research shows that improving academic life outcomes for students is highly correlated with and dependent upon integrated schools.  They have seen some of the data being shared here before, and while it seems along racial lines, it is more so a byproduct of redlining and socio-economic disadvantage.  Many districts use this data as a way to integrate their schools.  This is what needs to be addressed in PUSD since the Supreme Court in 2007 outlawed redrawing boundaries solely along racial lines.  I truly hope they will change the district’s trajectory on these issues for the betterment of all PUSD students.

Also, as I will share, I believe that all PUSD schools should have access to languages; however, if PUSD values certain programs like DLIP so much, they should be moved to schools that will always remain open and serve a community that can benefit the English language learners who speak the language, which is what bilingual programs were made to do after California was sued for not doing so in the 70s in Lau v. Nichols.

With piecemeal decision-making and no coherent long-term vision for the future of PUSD schools, these types of rushed facilities decisions are likely to continue. PUSD has already experienced this before. The district rebuilt Blair with the expectation that newer facilities would attract and retain more families, yet enrollment continued to decline, and the school is now being discussed as part of the consolidation conversation. Without a broader demographic, enrollment, and educational strategy guiding facilities investments, the district risks repeating the same pattern. PUSD should reevaluate the decision to invest heavily in one school, such as San Rafael, that may itself face closure in the future, potentially at the expense of other schools serving larger neighborhood populations and communities with greater long-term need.

All this being said, there is a better way to move forward.

The district needs a holistic, progressive vision for the integrated, full-staffed schools of tomorrow, and here are four points for doing so.

One – Establish long-term enrollment and staffing stability

PUSD must figure out which schools will never be closed due to where the students live, using the heat maps, scatterplots, and birth rates, along with other demographic data to plan.

The district should align feeder patterns from elementary through middle and high school, while staffing schools more proactively by capping enrollment and improving enrollment projections. Doing so would create more stable classes and master scheduling and reduce the annual disruption many schools experience at the start of the academic year.

Without better planning, some schools begin the year with uncertain enrollment counts, are understaffed, or forced to collapse or remake master schedules and classes weeks into the semester due to inaccurate projections. In some cases, students lose teachers months into the school year or spend extended periods – sometimes an entire year – with substitutes because permanent teachers cannot be hired in time. While many neighboring districts complete staffing and hiring in the spring, some PUSD students begin the school year without a permanent credentialed teacher, placing them at an academic disadvantage from the very first day of instruction when compared to the more affluent districts around PUSD.

Two – Redraw Attendance Boundaries to Promote School Integration

PUSD must redraw boundaries so that schools are more integrated. If you understand the history of redlining in the United States, you will understand the disparity between schools and why Pasadena must undo this past history through redrawn boundaries.  See the maps of Pasadena here, along with the heat maps of PUSD students and where they live, to see how they overlay perfectly.  See also: We can draw school zones to make classrooms less segregated. This is how well your district does.

Is your district drawing borders to reduce or perpetuate racial segregation?

The board often discusses how it can improve academics while ignoring the fact that extensive research, since the seminal Coleman Report of the 60s, has shown that integrated schools are the most important factor in improving student academic and life outcomes, especially for those who are furthest from opportunity.

While the current US administration seeks ways to dismantle integration policies and gerrymander districts, PUSD should fight back and do the opposite.  We know from decades of research that integrated schools are one of the most important tools we have and one of, if not the biggest, predictors of a child’s success in public schools, yet PUSD has not actively used this model for whole-scale change to improve the district’s outcomes for all students, instead doubling down on capitalist scarcity-driven “school choice” and “signature program” models that have not helped all students and has further segregated them.

The research about school integration through many studies… shows that “racially, culturally, and economically diverse school settings are strongly associated with a range of short and long-term benefits for all racial groups. These benefits include gains in math, science, reading, and critical thinking skills, as well as improvements in graduation rates. Research also demonstrates that diverse schools are better equipped than high-poverty schools to counteract the negative effects of poverty. Over the long-term, students who attend diverse schools are more likely than students from homogeneous schools to choose diverse colleges, neighborhoods, and workplaces later in life. They possess better critical thinking skills and analytical ability and are more likely to form cross-racial friendships.” – National Coalition on School Diversity

Chief Justice Thurgood Marshall once said, “Unless our children begin to learn together, there is little hope that our people will ever learn to live together and understand each other.” He wrote these words in his dissent in Milliken v. Bradley (1974), where a 5-4 majority of the United States Supreme Court virtually prohibited busing across school district lines to desegregate metropolitan areas, which in many ways marked the Court’s – and the country’s – gradual turn away from efforts to integrate schools. The slow dismantling of Brown v. Board (1954) has been an ongoing process in the US.  PUSD must move forward toward integration again, not backward.

Three – Reevaluate School Choice, Open Enrollment, and Market-Based Programs that have Exacerbated District Segregation

PUSD must reevaluate open enrollment, “choice” policies, and “signature programs” that the district currently uses to “market” to families.  Ironically, while PUSD is against the encroachment of charter schools within its boundaries, it uses similar strategies to market its own schools.  Schools are a public good for all, not a free-market-based endeavor where there are some schools that are winners while others lose out.  Since PUSD stopped its busing in the early 2000s under then superintendent, Percy Clark, PUSD students are more segregated today than they were 30 years ago.  Data from Stanford University’s Educational Opportunity Project shows that segregation in PUSD has doubled since 1991 between Black-White, while the Black population decreased from 36% to 11%; it even increased for Hispanic-White, while PUSD’s Hispanic population increased 17% to almost 60%, and tripled between Asian-White.  The UCLA Civil Rights Project has shown, along with others, that schools today are more segregated than they were 30 years ago.  One author cited two policy choices America has made: increasing school choice options and ending court oversight of integration efforts…

“When we switched from a commitment to integration and equity to school choice, it’s not terribly surprising that we see rising school segregation,” said Ann Owens, a professor of sociology and public policy at USC and one of the report’s authors. “We’ve abdicated our responsibility to integration, and unfettered choice does not magically lead to integration.”

The Stanford data shows that segregation is not just about how many students are in each group, but more about how they’re distributed across schools and how segregated PUSD has become since.  Moreover, PUSD thought that by using choice, it would help stem the loss of families or declining enrollment, yet that has not happened.  In fact, out-of-district student enrollment has declined at a rate equal to or greater than that of in-district students, so the argument that PUSD will gain more out-of-district students is unlikely to materialize.  Furthermore, segregation hasn’t gone away; it has just evolved using school choice, charters, vouchers, and the redrawing of districts to become more segregated.

Some districts rightfully use dual language enrollment to serve students who are already in a community where that language is spoken or to integrate more marginalized communities to provide an adequate education to meet those communities’ needs.  PUSD has instead sometimes used it to attract families to campuses where there are very few students, and sometimes in more affluent neighborhoods (i.e., San Rafael and Field – the two elementary schools with no attendance zones) where there are few students who live there who would benefit, and not from marginalized communities due to a lack of access.  When this happens, you have more stratification and segregation because families do not choose schools equally. The research consistently shows that higher-income and more resourced families apply earlier, navigate open-enrollment systems more effectively, and prioritize academic reputation, whereas the lower-income families face barriers of transportation, information, and time.

Another issue that has contributed to the segregation of PUSD is how it has prioritized choice to attract more affluent families over integration with the way it has used locally controlled funds.  The problem is, though, it really hasn’t attracted many, only to have PUSD schools competing with one another for enrollment.

PUSD receives California supplemental and concentration grant funds, which are part of the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF).  These funds are to be used by school districts to increase or improve services for high-needs students – specifically foster youth, English learners (EL), and low-income, socio-economically disadvantaged (SED) students – but were instead sometimes being spent on Dual Immersion schools by ensuring at least 1 EL student was in a class to qualify, though the majority of the students were not high needs.  Moreover, some of these schools have class sizes that are smaller on average than the regular PUSD classes.

These funds must be spent on initiatives that improve student achievement and close achievement gaps. However, PUSD has used, in the past, Supplemental and Concentration money and now Measure I/J tax money to prop up programs with few SED and EL students, such as the DLIP programs, instead of using it on all students for maximal impact on more students.  This is Robin Hood in reverse.  Outside of Sierra Madre, two of the elementary schools without boundaries have the lowest amount of socio-economically disadvantaged (SED) students, and the least number of ELs, Field with 28.7% and 8.9%, and San Rafael 34% and 9%, respectively, yet they are getting a large benefit from those dollars, compared to the higher needs schools with over 80% SED.  State and local funding should be allocated where it will have the greatest impact, ensuring scarce resources advance the greater good and benefit the largest number of students.

Districts, such as San Francisco, Berkeley, and Oakland in California, along with others nationwide with highly segregated communities, actively engineer their boundaries and choice systems to influence integration outcomes.  Pasadena hasn’t redrawn its boundaries to integrate schools and mostly relies on choice and “signature programs,” and “hopes” integration happens – and it hasn’t, only to have worsened since busing was discontinued.

In summary, decades of empirical research show that unconstrained school choice systems tend to increase or reproduce racial and socioeconomic segregation, because family preferences, unequal access, and structural constraints systematically sort students across schools. PUSD cannot leave this process unmanaged, as school systems almost always sort along race and class lines when left to operate without deliberate intervention.

It is unfortunate that the district’s current approach uses a capitalist model that commodifies and stratifies public education, making access to schools competitive and scarce, where some schools win, and others lose, which ends up stratifying and segregating students in the same district. The result, as research shows, is that PUSD has become more segregated. Education is meant to be a democratic, egalitarian system of public education for the benefit of all students, no matter where they reside in PUSD’s boundaries. It is therefore the responsibility of district leaders and policymakers to actively address these patterns if they are to meaningfully improve student outcomes.

Four – Invest Local and State Resources in Fully-Staffed, Comprehensive Schools

Use the state-provided monies, including the local 12 million dollars from the city that PUSD gets, the 5 million from Parcel Tax Measure EE, which, taken together at 17 million, is significantly more than all other local districts get to offer some of the following:

• Redo an academic master plan that builds from classrooms out and outlines what every student at each school in PUSD should have for an equitable quality education.  That 17 million alone, not including money recouped from closures, could provide over 160 new teachers to offer some of the following.

• Ensure smaller class sizes and class size caps for students.  PUSD’s classes are too high for the population it serves.  PUSD must be progressive and bold in using such monies to lower class sizes across the district and offer even lower ones to those with higher levels of socio-economic disadvantage, as do districts like LAUSD that cap class sizes for predominantly Hispanic, Black, Asian, and other Non-Anglo (PHBAO) schools.

• Allow Special education students to be at every site, not just select sites, to help integrate them into every school population, instead of putting them in overabundance at certain schools to save money.

• Offer a foreign language to every student, from elementary through high school.  It should not be a program; it should be what is good educational practice for ALL students.  Languages should be offered at all elementary schools instead of just a few as an attraction or draw for a school or program. In contrast to where learning a second language is the norm in much of Europe and Asia. All students learn a foreign language, starting in elementary school. The question I would ask our PUSD leaders is, are our children not worthy of this offering that it has to be commodified or scarcity-driven so that only some kids benefit?

Most European students are learning a foreign language in school while Americans lag

“Across Europe, students typically begin studying their first foreign language as a required school subject between the ages of 6 and 9.”  The irony is that PUSD spends more per pupil than many European and Asian Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries that offer foreign languages and similar elective classes.

• Ensure all elementary campuses provide library services, visual and performing arts, music, dance, and physical education, along with enrichment opportunities such as STEM, technology, and world languages that promote the academic, creative, social, and physical development of every student.

• Ensure all secondary campuses offer a comprehensive range of opportunities, including academics, foreign languages, STEM and computer science, the arts, athletics, academies, and career technical education.

In reimagining and right-sizing the district, schools and students stand to benefit from more resources being poured into the remaining schools that are at appropriate levels.  Some of the research done on school closures has shown that for every 1 out of 15 schools that close, there are estimated savings of about 4% of a district’s budget, mostly in labor costs, since a district’s budget (85-95%) is made up of people.  For PUSD, that would mean that approximately 9-15 million could be saved and spent on students instead of extra campuses, and there are more savings for high schools since they need more staff to operate.

With any savings from closures, money given by the state, and from local taxes (I/J), including the recent parcel tax (EE), potentially equalling 30 million, PUSD could offer more to reimagine PUSD, including advanced placement courses (AP), electives, sports, arts, more foreign languages, more of whatever the school community needs, and even smaller class sizes, which is what PUSD teachers and parents want for their students.

Conclusion:

PUSD stands at a crossroads. The district can continue making reactive decisions driven by a lack of future planning due to enrollment pressures, political influence, or double down on competition between schools that stratify and segregate its community, or it can use this moment to build a coherent, equitable, and future-oriented public education system worthy of the world-class city and community it serves.

With nearly $1.5 billion in bond funding, an additional $17 million in taxes Measure I/J and EE provide, and higher per-pupil funding than neighboring districts, PUSD has a once-in-a-generation opportunity not merely to preserve schools close to where students live, but to redesign them around what research, experience, and common sense show all students actually need to succeed.

That means stable and fully staffed schools, smaller class sizes, integrated campuses, strong neighborhood feeder patterns, comprehensive academic and enrichment opportunities, equitable distribution of resources, and access to arts, languages, athletics, special education inclusion, and career pathways for every child, and not just those fortunate enough to attend a select program.

It means recognizing that public education is not a marketplace where schools compete for survival, but a public good that should work for all students across the district, no matter what school they attend. Decades of research have already shown the consequences of allowing segregation and inequity to deepen through unmanaged choice systems and uneven investment. PUSD now has the opportunity to choose a different path: one that intentionally creates integrated, thriving schools that reflect the diversity of the communities it serves to fix the racial and economic injustices of the past. School consolidations may ultimately be unavoidable in an era of declining enrollment, but closures without a larger educational vision will only accelerate mistrust, instability, and inequity. The question is not simply which schools should close or remain open.

The real question is what kind of district PUSD wants to become for the next generation of students. If the district is willing to think boldly, plan holistically, and place students above politics, preferred facilities and programs, PUSD could become a statewide model for what equitable, integrated, fully staffed public schools of the future can look like.

John Lira is a 25-year veteran PUSD educator and sits on the board of the United Teachers of Pasadena