Wednesday, April 1, 2026

No Decisions About Closing Schools Yet Made, Superintendent Tells Tuesday Town Hall

By Altadena Now Staff

Pasadena Unified School District officials told a virtual town hall audience Tuesday that no schools have yet been recommended for closure — but the advisory committee studying possible campus consolidations is only roughly halfway through its work. The earliest closures to take effect would be in the 2027-28 school year.

The March 31 town hall — live-streamed in English and Spanish — offered the district’s most detailed public accounting yet of the consolidation timeline, the legal framework governing the process, and the financial realities driving it.

With multiple campuses still under active review, a projected district budget shortfall in the tens of millions of dollars, and an enrollment decline of roughly 23% over the past decade, district leaders and outside consultants sought to reassure a wary community that the process remains open-ended and inconclusive — even as the demographic trends that triggered it show no sign of reversing.

“I want to be very clear that no decisions have been made about consolidation to close schools at this time,” Superintendent Dr. Elizabeth Blanco said in her opening remarks. “Today is one of the many opportunities for your input.”

But the weight of that reassurance landed on a community already carrying the trauma of the January 2025 Eaton Fire, the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, and years of watching neighborhood schools slowly disappear.

The town hall’s moderator, Eric Johnson — associate director of the student-serving nonprofit Stars, a member of the clergy, chair of the wellness committee for the Eaton Fire Collaborative, and a board member of the Clergy Community Coalition and Collaborate Pasadena — framed the moment by reaching back to his own childhood in the district during the first year of court-mandated desegregation in 1970.

“That year began the school district’s battle with declining enrollment,” Johnson said. “It is the reason why we have more private schools per capita than any other city our size in this country.”

Johnson, a PUSD graduate and longtime Altadena resident, described the organizations he serves as “committed to seeing all students and especially underserved students thrive.”

The Altadena Contradiction

Perhaps the most charged exchange of the session centered on Altadena, where the Eaton Fire destroyed the Eliot Arts Magnet campus and displaced students and families across the community. The district holds a board resolution to rebuild Eliot — yet it is simultaneously studying whether to shrink its overall footprint through consolidation.

Dr. Joseph Pandolfo, executive vice president of Total School Solutions, the outside consulting firm facilitating the consolidation study, acknowledged the tension head-on.

“Part of the community wants Eliot back because it was there pre-fire and it belonged to be there,” Pandolfo said. “And then there might be some other different opinion about, well, why would you do that when we’re looking at consolidating schools?”

Pandolfo confirmed that the Altadena school currently sharing space at McKinley School of the Arts is scheduled to return to its own campus at the beginning of the next school year — a move the consolidation timeline would not affect.

As for Eliot, he said the board would have to reverse its existing resolution in order to halt any rebuilding effort. The Consolidation Study Advisory Committee (CSAC) could make a recommendation on either campus, but no such recommendation has been made.

Johnson, who noted his long residence in Altadena, pointed out that multiple schools in previous consolidation rounds had already been closed in the community. The question of what remains for a neighborhood that is simultaneously rebuilding from fire and bracing for further closures hung over much of the session.

A $500,000-Per-Campus Savings — and a Statewide Crisis

Pandolfo laid out the financial math in blunt terms. As enrollment falls, revenue — driven by California’s Average Daily Attendance (ADA) funding formula — falls with it, but the fixed costs of operating each campus do not. A principal, office staff, custodial crews, utilities, and maintenance remain largely unchanged whether a school serves 600 students or 300.

He estimated that closing a single campus yields annual savings of roughly $500,000, though the figure varies by site and must be calculated individually for each school under consideration.

The district has closed approximately 11 schools in prior consolidation rounds.

But Pandolfo was equally insistent that Pasadena Unified’s enrollment losses are not a sign of local failure. California has lost more than 420,000 public school students since 2015-16 — a figure Pandolfo put in perspective by noting that the state of Wyoming has a total population of around half a million. Los Angeles County alone has shed almost 250,000 students over the same period, a 16% decline, and the California Department of Finance projects another 18% drop over the next decade.

“What are we doing wrong? What do we need to do to bring these students back?” Pandolfo said, characterizing a question he hears frequently. “That’s not really something that is happening here at Pasadena. Pasadena offers a lot of good programs.”

The district lost a net 135 students as a direct result of the Eaton Fire, according to district enrollment records Pandolfo cited — a modest figure compared to the nearly 4,000-student decline over the past decade, but one he said deserved acknowledgment.

Programs: What’s Protected, What’s at Risk

Pasadena Unified’s seven magnet schools — spanning arts, sciences, and dual language immersion programs — emerged as a focal point of community concern. A consultant working with the district through Total School Solutions described the magnet programs as central to the district’s identity and competitive position.

The magnet programs receive approximately $37 million to $38 million per year in federal funding, the consultant said, with two holding national recognition. She called them “signature magnet programs for the district” and said the district is committed to preserving and promoting them.

But a community-submitted question exposed a potential gap between that commitment and recent budget decisions. The questioner noted that while the district’s website promotes bilingual programs in Armenian, Chinese, French, and Spanish, all English Language Learner coach positions had been eliminated for the coming school year. None of the panelists could answer the question on the spot, with the consultant asking for clarification on the specific position title. The moment underscored the disconnect that can emerge when one committee studies consolidation while another makes budget cuts on a separate track.

Pandolfo acknowledged that the budget reductions and the consolidation study are being handled by different committees with different purviews, and that the consolidation process is partly aimed at creating efficiencies that could eventually slow the pace of such cuts.

Charter Schools Won’t Get First Dibs

One of the sharpest moments of clarity came from Sarine A. Abrahamian, outside legal counsel to Pasadena Unified, who addressed a widespread community fear: that any closed campus would be handed over to a charter school.

The concern stems from a former state law that granted charter schools a right of first refusal when district property was declared surplus. Abrahamian told the audience that law has sunsetted. Charter schools may express interest in available district property, she said, but they hold no preferential claim over any other party.

“I do want to clarify that the law that gave charters the first right of first refusal under the surplus property provisions has sunsetted,” Abrahamian said.

Closed Campuses and the Question of Blight

Abrahamian also outlined the district’s approach to campuses that have already been closed in prior rounds. A request for proposals is currently out for the former Linda Vista Elementary School site, seeking development opportunities while maintaining the existing park footprint. At the former Roosevelt site, a workforce housing project is underway in partnership with the city.

For any campuses closed in future rounds, Abrahamian said the Assembly Bill 1912 (AB 1912) equity impact analysis would require the district to present a plan to prevent blight — a provision she described as one of the benefits of following the state’s recommended process. She noted that a presentation on the blight metric is scheduled for the next CSAC meeting.

Pandolfo explained that AB 1912 is mandatory only for districts in state receivership — those that have gone bankrupt and been assigned a state administrator. For all other districts, including Pasadena Unified, the California Attorney General has recommended but not required that the process be followed. The district chose to adopt the AB 1912 framework voluntarily, including the creation of an advisory committee, because the attorney general recommended it.

Survey Credibility Questioned

The town hall surfaced community frustration that extends beyond the consolidation question itself. Multiple submitted questions challenged the credibility of the district’s community survey, with respondents characterizing it as a “push survey” designed to produce predetermined conclusions.

Pandolfo, whose firm developed the survey instrument, defended its design as consistent with surveys used in consolidation processes across the state, but he did not dismiss the criticism.

“If there’s folks who read the survey and want to make the conclusion that, ‘Hey, this survey is biased,’ they’re free to do that,” Pandolfo said, adding that others may find the questions reasonable and answer them accordingly.

Diversity, Equity, and the Emotional Toll

The CSAC is scheduled to examine demographic and ethnic diversity data at its next meeting, one of several metrics required under AB 1912. The equity impact analysis also requires examination of transportation access, school feeder patterns, and the effects on student subgroups including English learners and socioeconomically disadvantaged families.

Both Pandolfo and the consultant acknowledged the cumulative emotional toll on students who have endured COVID-era disruptions, the Eaton Fire, and now the prospect of losing their school. Wales said the district has “probably already put into place social emotional wellness centers” and has an invested interest in supporting the whole child, adding that she expected those systems to carry forward through any transition.

Pandolfo said any closure would require a thoughtful transition plan. “The research does show that to help support the kids transition, it has to be a thoughtful process and that the district must be proactive in making a transition so that students feel welcome and wanted,” he said.

What Happens Next

The CSAC has three meetings remaining before it delivers a recommendation to the board of education. That recommendation is non-binding — the board makes the final decision. A handful of schools have already been removed from the list under consideration, and more are expected to be eliminated as the committee works through the remaining AB 1912 metrics.

An in-person public input session has been announced but not yet scheduled. The full recording of Tuesday’s town hall, in English and Spanish, along with a compilation of frequently asked questions, will be posted on the district’s website at pusd.us.

Johnson, closing the session, urged the community to stay engaged.

“Now more than ever, there’s plenty of things that are pushing us to divide,” he said. “Keeping PUSD viable for our students, I believe, is something that we can all unite on.”

No parents or community members spoke directly during Tuesday’s virtual town hall. Questions were submitted in advance and read aloud by Johnson, who served as moderator. The format did not include live public comment.