Thursday, June 25, 2026

Guest Opinion | Kimberly Kenne: Pasadena Unified Needs Spending Plans that the Public Can Understand and Believe

This week, the Pasadena Unified School District will approve its Budget for 26-27 and its Local Control Accountability Plan (LCAP).  The budget document is over 200 pages, and most of it is difficult to understand.  For instance, what is the line for certificated salaries  and who are the people in that category?  Teachers? Librarians? Counselors? Principals? Central Office Directors?  (The answer is all of the above).  What programs do they support and for which students?  It can be difficult to tell exactly how the over $300 million in the general fund is being used to provide an education to the students of Pasadena Unified.

The LCAP document was intended to be the more user-friendly narrative that describes what activities the budget is funding and why.  It includes metrics showing how students are performing and describes what activities are focused on the most at-risk students.  At almost 170 pages, it is not the most concise of plans but at least there is an attempt to link funding to student needs and the strategies to address those needs.

That is why it is so important that the LCAP reflects the actual figures in the budget as it is the more accessible to the public of the two documents.  When the district outlines one set of expenditures in their LCAP and then puts different expenditures in their budget, they are misleading the public.

This mismatch has happened for several years in Pasadena Unified. In the 25-26 LCAP, the district lists funding that is contributing to targeted students and their needs.  But in the district’s financial system, these funds are sometimes budgeted for different purposes.  One culprit is the structure of the LCAP itself that was introduced in 24-25 – the district reduced the number of actions described in the plan which made it more difficult to tell what supports were being funded in each action and ended up commingling multiple funding sources and multiple funding uses in each action.  This resulted in an LCAP that no longer helps the community understand how funding is being targeted to help students and raise achievement.

During the next school year, the district and community will be creating a new 3-year version of the LCAP.  We need a revised document that can clearly show our community what actions are being planned to help our students and how those actions are being funded.  It is a requirement that all our educational partners – staff, parents, students, and community members – are involved in the process of creating the LCAP.  I look forward to an inclusive process that results in a plan that we all can read and understand.  Then the community will be able to fulfill the other part of the intended purpose of the plan – holding the district accountable for increasing student achievement, especially for those students most at-risk.

Kimberly Kenne is the Trustee of Pasadena Unified School District representing District 1.

The views expressed are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Pasadena Unified School District Board of Education