Thursday, February 12, 2026

Tonight, School Board Will Set Guidelines and Goals for Committee That Could Recommend Campus Closures

The school consolidation advisory panel begins work on February 23 with a timeline to deliver recommendations by May

The Pasadena Unified School District Board of Education will meet in a special session at 8:30 p.m. Thursday to set the goals for an advisory committee that will begin evaluating possible school closures in Pasadena and Altadena.

The Superintendent’s School Consolidation Advisory Committee is scheduled to launch Feb. 23.

Tonight’s board meeting centers on a single discussion item outlining the “Outcomes for Consideration” that will guide the committee’s work.

The advisory committee will hold seven meetings and could recommend school closures to the board by May. The board’s final vote on any consolidation scenarios is scheduled for June 25, according to the district. Any closures would take effect for the 2027-2028 school year.

Trustees voted 5-2 in January to approve the consultant contract and to adopt Resolution 2857, which established nine equity metrics the committee must use in its analysis. State law — Assembly Bill 1912 — requires districts considering closures to conduct an equity impact analysis and provide opportunities for public input on the metrics and the impact of any proposed closures, according to Education Code section 41329.

The board’s presentation for Thursday’s meeting lists four desired outcomes for the committee’s work, according to district materials: that students have fair and equitable access to high-quality educational programs; that PUSD operates as a fiscally responsible school system; that the community has multiple opportunities for input throughout the process; and that PUSD will continue working toward a long-term Transformation Plan.

The nine metrics the board approved in January include facility conditions, operating costs and savings, school capacity, special programs, environmental factors, demographic balance, transportation needs, aesthetics and potential blight impact, and feeder school attendance patterns, according to the district’s presentation materials.

In addition to the committee’s seven meetings, the district plans to conduct a community survey, hold two town hall meetings and provide updates at Board of Education meetings, according to the district.

The meeting takes place less than a week after more than 300 PUSD teachers, staff, students and parents rallied at Pasadena City Hall on February 7 against $24.5 million in cuts to school-based services that the board approved in November. The cuts, which apply to the 2026-2027 fiscal year, are part of a broader effort to address a financial crisis driven by declining enrollment, deficit spending, the expiration of one-time COVID-19 relief funds, rising costs and uncertainty in state and federal funding.

PUSD has closed 11 schools since 1989 due to declining enrollment. The most recent closures, in 2019, resulted in a lawsuit alleging discrimination against Latino students. A Los Angeles Superior Court judge ruled on January 30, that the district did not discriminate in those closures, according to K-12 Dive.

The Thursday special meeting begins at 8:30 p.m. in the Elbie J. Hickambottom Board Room, 351 S. Hudson Ave. in Pasadena. It will be broadcast on Charter Cable Channel 95 and streamed at live.boardmeetings.info. Written public comments may be emailed to publiccomment@pusd.us.