Thursday, July 16, 2026

PUSD Staff to Brief Board Tonight on Soil Remediation Project, 87 Trees Remaining

Pasadena Unified School District staff will brief trustees Thursday on Eaton Fire soil remediation at 11 campuses, in a presentation that does not address the district’s unresolved dispute with the City of Pasadena over who controls tree removals on school grounds.

In materials prepared for the meeting, the district acknowledged that the city “now disagrees with the District’s position on jurisdiction and process.” PUSD maintains that state-supervised removal of hazardous contamination is not subject to municipal land-use rules. The city maintains its Tree Protection Ordinance applies to protected trees on campuses within city limits. The question has not been decided by any court.

The 13-slide presentation, titled “Restoring Safe Outdoor Learning Spaces,” makes its case on public-health grounds. It states that the January 2025 fire destroyed five district schools, cost nearly 1,000 students and 120 employees their homes, and forced the evacuation of more than 10,430 students and 1,300 employees. The fire’s impact, the presentation says, extended beyond damaged buildings.

Following guidance from Pasadena Public Health and families’

Thursday, July 16, 2026

A New Law Holds Colleges Accountable If Their Grads Don’t Earn More Than $36,000 A Year

By Adam Echelman, CALMATTERS

With just a high school diploma in hand, and no additional training or education, the average Californian is currently expected to earn about $18 an hour, or $36,000 a year — just above the state’s minimum wage.

Effective this month, all colleges, universities and short-term certificate programs in the U.S. must prove that their graduates earn at least the median wage of someone in their state with only a high school diploma. Otherwise, their students will soon become ineligible for federal loans.

It’s a “low bar,” said Michael Itzkowitz, the president of the HEA Group, which conducts research into higher education policy. “If you’re going to college, you expect to be earning at least minimum wage, and probably even more than that.”

In places such as the Bay Area, $36,000 a year barely covers housing, not to mention other expenses.

Of the nearly 3,000 higher education courses of study in California evaluated by the U.S.

Thursday, July 16, 2026

School Board to Vote on Declaring City Zoning Laws Inapplicable to 10 PUSD School Properties

Resolution 2896 would invoke a state law the district says allows a school board, by a two-thirds vote, to render city zoning ordinances inapplicable to district property

The Pasadena Unified School District Board of Education votes tonight on a resolution declaring the City of Pasadena’s zoning ordinances inapplicable to 10 school properties where the district is removing trees and contaminated soil after the Eaton Fire.

Resolution 2896 on Thursday’s agenda would invoke Government Code section 53094, a state law which the resolution says permits a school board, by a two-thirds vote of its membership, to render a city or county zoning ordinance inapplicable to a proposed use of district property.

The statute is best understood, legal observers say, as a limited allocation of authority between statewide educational interests and local land-use control. It does not necessarily confer blanket immunity from local law.

A core legal issue may be whether Government Code section 53094 applies to a tree protection ordinance.

Thursday, July 16, 2026

Catch the Country’s Best Before They Bolt

Chamber musicians across all fifty states just cast their votes, and the verdict is in: the finest small ensemble in America spends two Tuesdays this fall a short drive from your door. Chamber Music America named Camerata Pacifica its 2026 Ensemble of the Year — a peer-nominated honor, which means the people who actually do this for a living picked them.

Meet the ensemble Adrian Spence founded in 1990, back when he was a 25-year-old flautist with a Brandenburg obsession and — no, really — over 2,000 logged skydives. Thirty-six seasons later, his group calls Rothenberg Hall at the Huntington its San Marino home, and only two dates remain this year. October 13 brings Rachmaninoff’s Chopin variations and Schubert’s B-flat trio, played by Naumburg winner Grace Park and company. November 10 goes bolder: Mazzoli, Mozart’s wind quintet, and a world premiere from Niloufar Nourbakhsh.

Here’s what separates Camerata Pacifica from the usual chamber outfit: Spence handpicks every musician, then drills each program through a week-long residency before playing it across four cities.

Thursday, July 16, 2026

LA Ensemble Brightwork Invites Audiences to Steer the Music in Sierra Madre

Brightwork new music returns to Sierra Madre Playhouse on Saturday, Aug. 22, at 8 p.m. with “New Music Game Night!”, a program of game-inspired chamber works that invites the audience to help shape the performance.

The Los Angeles-based ensemble presents the concert under the Playhouse’s “Music @ the Playhouse” banner. Billed as an eclectic evening of game-inspired music, the program makes audience participation a central feature.

The works range from Cristina Lord’s choose-your-own-adventure piece based on Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” to Isaac Schankler’s polyrhythm game, “The Six-Body Problem.” Also featured are works by Los Angeles-based composers Siobhán Dougall and Richard An.

Listeners are folded into the performance rather than kept at a distance. “They can vote on an adventure during Lord’s work,” Artistic Director and pianist Aron Kallay said in the announcement. He added that audience members will also be able to interact in a game that includes a video element about surveillance, and that two people will be invited to compete in a different game live on stage.

Thursday, July 16, 2026

LA County Launches Multilingual Board Agendas, Digital Displays

CITY NEWS SERVICE

Los Angeles County announced Wednesday the launch of multilingual online resources and digital displays aimed at making Board of Supervisors meetings more accessible to the public.

The upgrades include Senate Bill 707-compliant agenda web pages offering translated materials in Spanish, Tagalog and Mandarin, according to county officials.

The updated agenda web page provides direct access to translated meeting information, agenda materials and related Board resources in the three languages required under state law, officials said.

The county said visitors whose preferred language is not among those languages can continue using Google Translate to access information in dozens of additional languages.

Two digital screens have also been installed in the foyer of the Board Hearing Room at the Hall of Administration in downtown Los Angeles. The displays automatically show weekly Board agendas and supplemental items in English, along with rotating displays in Spanish, Tagalog and Mandarin, and include QR codes linking to agenda materials.

Wednesday, July 15, 2026

Cole Rebukes PUSD For Deflecting Blame in Tree Removal Battle

By ANDRÈ COLEMAN, Managing Editor

Hours after the Pasadena Unified School District released a statement to Pasadena Now stating that the City told district officials that the City’s Tree Protection Ordinance did not apply to a soil removal project that includes the removal of nearly 200 trees, Councilmember Rick Cole responded Wednesday with a strongly worded statement, accusing the district of escalating an increasingly bitter dispute over tree removals at school campuses.

“Enough already! The School District continues to ignore the sensible advice that when you are in a hole, stop digging,” Cole said, calling the district’s latest claims “a pathetic attempt to shift responsibility.”

The exchange is the latest development in a legal and political battle over the district’s plan to remove nearly 200 trees as part of an Eaton Fire-related soil remediation project. PUSD has said the work is necessary to remove contaminated soil containing hazardous materials, including lead, before students return to campuses.

City officials contend the district must comply with Pasadena’s Tree Protection Ordinance before removing protected trees.

Wednesday, July 15, 2026

PUSD: City Said Tree Protection Ordinance Did Not Apply to Soil Removal Project

The City of Pasadena acknowledged Tuesday it provided the Pasadena Unified School District with conflicting information in June about whether protected tree-removal permits were required for the district’s hazardous-material and soil-removal work.

PUSD said public criticism had wrongly suggested the district moved ahead “without notice, without coordination, and without regard for the City of Pasadena, regulatory agencies, or the broader community.”

The district said that was not accurate, asserting it had months of communication with the city and other agencies before work began.

The district said the city informed PUSD that Pasadena’s Tree Protection Ordinance did not apply to the cleanup project, then later reversed that position.

Pasadena Chief Communications Officer Lisa Derderian confirmed the city told PUSD in mid-June that tree removal did not require a permit, but said the city corrected that guidance on June 25, informing the district that permits were required.

Derderian said the June exchange followed earlier notifications on April 1 and May 14 stating that permits would be necessary.

Wednesday, July 15, 2026

Barger, Bass Ask Congress for $15.7 Billion to Fund Eaton, Palisades Fire Recovery

Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass have sent a series of joint letters to Congress seeking continued federal funding for the long-term recovery from the Eaton and Palisades wildfires, according to a July 14 news release from Barger’s office.

The letters — addressed to congressional leadership, the Los Angeles County congressional delegation, and the chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees — ask lawmakers to advance a supplemental disaster appropriation aligned with a combined city and county request of $15.7 billion to rebuild infrastructure and communities burned in the January 2025 fires that destroyed much of Altadena, an unincorporated community in Barger’s district, and forced evacuations in neighboring Pasadena. For Altadena and Pasadena, the request is the latest step in a monthslong effort to secure federal money that has not yet been approved.

In the letters, the two officials request support to help the county and the city rebuild critical public infrastructure, restore community facilities,

Wednesday, July 15, 2026

Extreme Heat Warning for Pasadena, San Gabriel Valley Remains in Effect Through Thursday

An extreme heat warning covering Pasadena, Altadena and the rest of the San Gabriel Valley remains in effect through 8 p.m. Thursday, with the National Weather Service forecasting Wednesday as the hottest day of the stretch.

The warning, which took effect at 10 a.m. Tuesday puts much of inland Los Angeles County under a high risk of heat-related illness as temperatures climb toward the triple digits, with a Pasadena high forecast near 98 degrees before an increase in onshore flow begins to ease conditions Thursday. County and city officials have pointed residents to cooling options and urged extra care for older adults, young children and people without air conditioning.

The Weather Service said temperatures across the valleys, lower mountains and far interior would range from the 90s to as high as 110 degrees, with the interior hottest. “Wednesday will be the warmest day,” the agency said, forecasting an additional 3 to 6 degrees of warming. In the San Fernando Valley, highs were forecast to reach 110 on Wednesday and about 104 on Thursday,