Pasadena Unified School District Board of Education trustees Thursday, Oct. 22 directed Superintendent Elizabeth Blanco to bring forward a district transformation process at next month’s regular board meeting.
Trustees approved the motion by a vote of 4-3, with Trustees Jennifer Hall Lee, Michelle Richardson Bailey and Patrice Marshall McKenzie voting no.
After a school consolidation process conducted this past spring resulted in no recommended mergers, trustees approved a resolution to embark on a district transformation process. Opponents of consolidation have accused the district of restarting the merger process under a different name.
The majority of public speakers Thursday night encouraged the district to only consider merging schools as a final option after all other alternatives had been explored. Some referenced PUSD already closing 11 schools and questioned the benefits the district saw financially from those closures.
Others asked the district to hold off on transformation and merger talks until a visioning process involving all district stakeholders could be completed.
At the beginning of Thursday’s discussion, Bailey made a motion to table the item until the visioning process could be completed. Her motion failed in a 4-3 vote with Tina Fredericks, Kim Kenne, Scott Harden and Yarma Velázquez voting no.
Harden moved to approve the motion with edits to change the direction for Blanco to bring back a district transformation process rather than a district transformation plan.
“A finalized plan with outcomes I think is not the intention,” Harden said. “It’s for the superintendent to come back with a process that leads to a thing.”
In addition, Harden added direction that Blanco come back with a target date to seat the community committee that will be created as part of the transformation process. Earlier this month, trustees voted on a definition of district transformation and the type of committee that would be used.
The Board of Education’s next regular meeting is scheduled for Thursday, Nov. 19.
Trustees later approved a $270,000 contract with Prospect Studio, the consultant who would conduct the visioning process. It was approved 6-1, with Kenne voting no.
Blanco said that her proposed process would recommend visioning occurring before the transformation process and community committee begins its work. McKenzie concurred with taking a sequential approach saying that the visioning would provide a roadmap for transformation and that moving forward without said roadmap means moving forward with an unknown destination.
“I’m not saying that none of the work is going to be done,” Blanco said. “The data being collected during the time the visioning is going on, but to run two huge processes simultaneously would be a lot for us to do.”
Harden and Kenne countered that they felt the two processes could happen simultaneously.
“We can’t start until we start and we can’t have the conversations with the community until we start, but the community seems very against starting,” Kenne said. “That’s where I’m trying to understand. We can’t be open with the community and bring them along if we don’t actually start.”
Thursday’s meeting was streamed live on the KLRN Pasadena YouTube channel.