Wednesday, June 10, 2026

PUSD Board President Disputes Brown Act Violation Accusations, Describes Consolidation Research as ‘Due Diligence’

Tina Fredericks says private notes and pre-contract conversations with a consultant were lawful information-gathering; critics say records released under the California Public Records Act show the consolidation process was shaped before the public was brought in

Pasadena Unified School District Board President Tina Fredericks disputes that her private work on a possible school-consolidation plan violated California’s open-meetings law, telling Pasadena Now in a written statement that her actions amounted to lawful due diligence on a difficult policy question driven by the district’s declining enrollment, half-empty campuses and a $30 million to $35 million budget gap.

Responding to questions from Pasadena Now, Fredericks defended conduct that has fueled Brown Act allegations and a recall effort against her.

At the center of the controversy are two sets of communications released under the California Public Records Act: a document titled “Consolidation 2027,” which Fredericks describes as her personal notes, and email exchanges between Fredericks and a Total School Solutions consultant whose firm was later hired by the district.

Wednesday, June 10, 2026

Pasadena Unified Plans Nearly $2 Million for Athletics After All

Despite a fiscal crisis that has forced Pasadena Unified to cut spending districtwide and sparked months of controversy over athletics reductions, the district plans to spend nearly $2 million on high school sports during the 2026-27 school year.

Documents scheduled for review by the Board of Education on Thursday show Pasadena Unified has allocated $1,933,749.49 for athletics, funding programs across Blair, Marshall, Muir and Pasadena high schools even as the district works to close a structural deficit exceeding $30 million.

The presentation offers the clearest picture yet of how athletics emerged from one of the district’s most contentious budget debates. It details funding allocations for each campus, districtwide support costs and the sports that will be offered next year after athletics became a focal point of public testimony during budget deliberations.

According to the presentation, Muir would receive the largest athletics allocation at $535,370.98, followed by Pasadena High at $500,903.22, Marshall at $361,790.92 and Blair at $234,184.37.

An additional $301,500 would fund districtwide athletics expenses,

Wednesday, June 10, 2026

Two Huge California Unions Clash Over Money, Political Clout This Election Season

By Dan Walters, CALMATTERS

In 1863, just 13 years after California became a state, its superintendent of public instruction, John Swett, founded the California Educational Society with 100 members, all men.

It was the genesis of what became the California Teachers Association, a trade union that achieved, through laser-like focus, substantial political power long before the state’s public employee unions gained collective bargaining rights a half-century ago.

The CTA collects dues from its more than 300,000 current members and spends much of its revenue on campaign contributions to friendly politicians and lobbying for and against legislative bills and the occasional ballot measure.

There are thousands of interest groups pressing their causes in the Capitol, but the CTA is generally regarded as the most influential. Its shining achievement was the 1988 passage of Proposition 98, a constitutional guarantee of state support for elementary, high school and community college education, offsetting the decline of local property taxes from Proposition 13 a decade earlier.

Wednesday, June 10, 2026

Pasadena Unified Board to Cut Ties With Closure Consultant, Open Budget Hearing

The Pasadena Unified School District Board of Education will move to formally end its contract with the consultant that led its now-halted school-consolidation effort when it meets in a special session Thursday, June 11, the same night it opens a required public hearing on a 2026-27 budget that must close a projected shortfall of $30 million to $35 million.

The termination of the district’s agreement with Total School Solutions appears on the board’s consent calendar, a block of items typically approved together without separate debate. The firm had been hired under a contract not to exceed $233,300 to run a state-mandated equity analysis identifying schools for possible closure or merger.

On May 28, the board rejected that $230,000 analysis, which had placed Blair, Thurgood Marshall, Don Benito, McKinley, Webster and Norma Coombs on a potential closure or merger list.

The board’s legal advisor told trustees that any future closure effort would have to begin again with a new analysis, and no school is closing under the current process.

Wednesday, June 10, 2026

Small-Business Mixer Brings County Officials to Altadena’s Lincoln Avenue Friday

A free, two-hour event hosted by Project Passion will connect Pasadena and Altadena entrepreneurs with grants, lenders, and the LA County Assessor

A free small-business mixer will bring Los Angeles County Assessor Jeff Prang and the executive director of a Los Angeles community lender to a Lincoln Avenue bar Friday from 6 to 8 p.m., hosted by a Pasadena-based nonprofit that has worked with partners since the Eaton Fire to support impacted families and businesses.

The DENA Small Business Mixer, hosted by Project Passion and four collaborating organizations, is scheduled for Friday, June 12, at the Good Neighbor Bar Patio, 2311 Lincoln Ave., Altadena. The event is free, and registration is encouraged, according to the host.

The mixer takes place inside the footprint of the Eaton Fire, which began January 7, 2025, and destroyed 9,414 structures and damaged 1,074 more across Altadena, Pasadena, and Sierra Madre, according to Cal Fire data. Nineteen people were killed.

Project Passion, registered with the California Secretary of State as a Pasadena-based nonprofit public benefit corporation,

Tuesday, June 9, 2026

LA County Supervisors Return Tuesday With Altadena Recovery Items on Crowded Agenda

After two cancelled meetings, the board will consider a brush-clearance motion for fire-impacted properties, an East L.A. oil-spill follow-up and a $20.4 million building purchase

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors will meet at 9:30 a.m. Tuesday in downtown Los Angeles for its first regular session in three weeks, taking up an agenda that includes several Altadena fire-recovery items along with countywide business.

The agenda — the first since meetings on May 26 and June 2 were cancelled — includes a motion calling for efforts to address hazardous vegetation and brush clearance at fire-impacted properties in Altadena and the unincorporated Santa Monica Mountains, according to the meeting log posted on the board’s website.

The meeting will be held in Board Hearing Room 381B at the Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration, 500 W. Temple St. It will also stream live on the board’s website.

The agenda also lists an ordinance to designate Altadena’s Historic Highlands neighborhood as a county historic district,

Tuesday, June 9, 2026

Roundtable Tonight Turns Altadena’s Fire Recovery Toward the Land Itself

Second event in LA Forum’s Alt:adena series gathers Tongva leaders, landscape designers, soil scientists and a salvage sawmill at Good Neighbor Bar

A public roundtable on rebuilding the land beneath Altadena — not just the houses on top of it — will convene Tuesday evening on the patio of Good Neighbor Bar, drawing together Indigenous land stewards, regenerative landscape designers, soil scientists and the sawmill milling fire-felled local trees into salvage lumber.

The event, called Alt:LAND, runs from 7 to 9 p.m. and is the second installment of a three-part roundtable series produced by the Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design. Per press materials supplied to Pasadena Now, panelists are drawn from the San Gabriel Band of Mission Indians — also known as the Gabrieleño-Tongva Band of Mission Indians — Altadena-based regenerative landscape firm Studio Petrichor, the Altadena Seed Library, the soil-health consultancy Soil Wise, and Boyle Heights sawmill Angel City Lumber.

According to the LA Forum,

Tuesday, June 9, 2026

Altadena Outpaces Palisades on Early Recovery Markers, New L.A. County Report Finds

Pasadena Transit ridership runs above pre-fire baseline as 17-month update tracks reoccupation, displacement and a projected $73.6 million annual hit to local spending

Los Angeles County released its third quarterly economic update on the 2025 wildfire recovery on Monday, finding that the Eaton Fire area is showing earlier signs of return than Pacific Palisades on several measures, even as only a fraction of a percent of destroyed homes have been rebuilt and displacement assistance runs out for thousands of survivors.

The report, “Los Angeles Wildfires: An Economic Update #3,” was produced by the LA County Department of Economic Opportunity and the LAEDC’s Institute for Applied Economics. It is the third installment in a quarterly series tracking the Eaton and Palisades fires, which began January 7, 2025.

According to the report, 26.7 percent of destroyed structures across both fire areas have received rebuild permits — a pace on par with the fastest-recovering wildfires nationally, including the Tubbs and Marshall fires. But only 0.47 percent have completed reconstruction and received occupancy approval.

Tuesday, June 9, 2026

Mobile Recreation Van Brings Sports and Play to Altadena Children as Local Parks Remain Under Repair

A Super Bowl LVI legacy program rolls into the Bob Lucas Memorial Library, where dozens of kids spent the first day of summer break with games, music and an Olympic mascot

Dozens of Altadena children spent the first weekday of summer break Friday at the Bob Lucas Memorial Library & Literacy Center, where a mobile recreation program brought sports equipment, lawn games, music and an appearance by Sam the Olympic Eagle — the official mascot of the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Olympics.

The free June 5, 2026, event was a stop by Park on the Move, a Super Bowl LVI legacy program operated in partnership by the Los Angeles Super Bowl LVI Host Committee, the County of Los Angeles Department of Parks and Recreation, and the Play Equity Fund. The program has concentrated recent activities in Altadena while the community’s parks remain under repair following the January 2025 Eaton Fire, which destroyed more than 9,400 structures and killed 19 people in and around the foothill community north of Pasadena.

Tuesday, June 9, 2026

City to Require Sheriff’s Deputies at City Events to Follow Its Policies, Including Immigration Limits

The council added the contract condition June 8 to a $15.5 million, five-year supplemental law enforcement agreement with Los Angeles County.

[Updated]  Pasadena will require Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies hired for city events to follow Pasadena’s policies, including its immigration policies, under a contract condition the council added June 8.

The condition was attached to a routine consent-calendar item authorizing the city to spend up to $15.5 million over five years on supplemental law enforcement from the County of Los Angeles, provided through the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department — $5 million for major events and $10.5 million for New Year’s activities, covering July 1, 2026, through June 30, 2031. The council approved the consent calendar, with the added language, without objection.

Councilmember Tyron Hampton pulled the item for separate discussion and pressed his colleagues to write the city’s values into the agreement, arguing it “doesn’t hurt to put that in writing” with any agency the city contracts with.