Facing a dire financial outlook, the Pasadena Unified School District Board of Education is poised to cut millions of dollars in programs and services on Thursday, to stave off a massive deficit and ceding control to county oversight.
The district’s trustees’ vote on Thursday will follow weeks of warnings and public outreach over the district’s $30 million to $35 million structural deficit – the result of declining enrollment, deficit spending, rising costs, the expiration of one-time COVID-19 relief dollars and uncertainty in state and federal funding.
At stake are what many consider to be vital programs and jobs that advocates say will impact the district for years.
District officials have laid out several scenarios of what could be eliminated by trustees in what will be a momentous vote on Thursday night.
The Superintendent’s Budget Advisory Committee made up of teachers, school staff, principals, administrators, parents, students and local residents, met several times this fall culminating in a list of program cuts ranked by priority.
District officials recommended the first 24 items on the list be included in the cuts, totaling about $18.5 million. District leadership presented the proposed cuts by grade spans: elementary schools, middle schools and high schools.
Included in high school reductions was a recommendation to reduce athletics budget by 50% that would be proportional at each site based on enrollment. Other proposed cuts at the high school level include: one assistant principal at Marshall, Pasadena High School and Muir; reduction of custodial staff by 4.5 full time equivalent positions; and reduction of staff counselors to ratio at Marshall (1.0 full-time equivalent), Blair (0.5 FTE) and PHS (0.5 FTE).
In budgeting contexts for organizations, a full-time equivalent is a unit of measurement used to figure out the number of full-time hours worked by all employees in the organization. So, 0.5 FTE, for instance, refers to an employee working only part-time.
Reductions would begin in December, with reduction notices issued in March and the new budget reflecting the cuts is due to be passed next July.
For months, the district’s finances have emerged as a singular issue, in the wake of the Eaton fire, which impacted a district already struggling with finances.
An Oct. 9 district meeting drew Los Angeles County officials, who warned that years of inaction by the district amid fiscal warning signs had left it at a crossroads that requires immediate and swift action to avoid county intervention and possibly receivership.
“I would not be here if we weren’t trying to convey that the clock is ticking,” Octavio Castelo, director of business advisory services at the Los Angeles County Office of Education told the public and the board. “We appreciate the very unique challenges that Pasadena is facing, but it is going to be tough for you, if not impossible, to revenue your way out of the problem.”
Castelo provided a recap of how PUSD arrived at its financial straits.
Officials described the district as being at a crossroads and likened the message from LACOE as being a yellow light warning with county intervention and possible receivership of the district as being the red light.
That same week, PUSD announced the roadmap for how it plans to implement $30 million to $35 million of reductions in the 2026-2027 school year. The hefty cuts needed are part of a multi-year fiscal stabilization plan aimed at cutting around $83 million over three fiscal years to address the troubling financial situation.
In its presentation, LACOE called the stabilization plan a proactive response from PUSD.
Complicating matters, however, was that since mid-September, according to PUSD spokesperson Hilda Ramirez Horvath, the district had been without a chief business officer after Saman Bravo-Karimi took a job at the Los Angeles Unified School District.
If the district doesn’t regain some fiscal balance, it risks county officials warned of more county intervention.
Castelo said the stages of county intervention begin with a fiscal expert being placed in a district, escalating to a fiscal advisor and the final step being a county administrator who would essentially run the district. He cited Inglewood Unified School District as one that has been under receivership for more than a decade.
District officials have framed the scenario as an unlikely last resort. They’ve reframed the issue in terms of “reinventing” district services.
“With every crisis comes an opportunity,” District Superintendent Elizabeth Blanco said to open a town hall on the matter earlier this month. “It’s a opportunity to reimagine, reinvent and do some transformation and not look at this as something that is going to pull us down because we have been stronger together.”
Thursday’s Board of Education meeting begins at 5 p.m. at the Elbie J. Hickambottom Board Room, #236, at 351 S. Hudson Ave., Pasadena. Meetings are broadcast live on Charter Cable Channel 95, on the KLRN Pasadena YouTube channel and on the web at http://live.boardmeetings.info.
The agenda can be found at https://bit.ly/484OqM9.