Career Preservation for Administrators Is Undermining Pasadena Unified Classrooms

GUEST OPINION

Pasadena Unified School District building (Photo – Staff)

PUSD recently described the ongoing fiscal crisis in the district, saying that they must identify $30 million in reductions. This was followed by a message saying the Superintendent’s Budget Advisory Committee was continuing its “robust” work to find those reductions.

By Walt Beckett

Last spring, I suggested some ideas for reducing the budget deficit, including a larger parcel tax. It remains to be seen whether the committee will consider any of those ideas. In this piece, I outline additional reductions that could be made.

Continuing a Pattern of Adding Management Jobs

A persistent pattern across multiple PUSD administrations is the promotion of employees from school-based roles into new central office positions. These roles didn’t exist prior to the promotion. This has occurred repeatedly in recent years. Here are a few examples:

• PUSD promoted a longtime principal into a position called Senior Director of TK–12 Schools. This role is new. Previously, there was a Chief Academic Officer (CAO), a role that still exists but no longer includes oversight of principals. The CAO position now seems focused on supporting the Curriculum, Instruction, and Professional Development department, her previous assignment—even though that department already has a director.
• A school site counselor was promoted to become the Institutional Equity and Title IX Coordinator in a new Office of Equity and Access.
• After receiving Expanded Learning Opportunities (after-school) funding from the state, PUSD created a new position to oversee it and promoted someone from a school site into the role, despite already having a person in charge of the LEARNs after-school program.
• Just this year, a longtime principal was moved into a new position called Principal on Special Assignment.
• PUSD also recently hired a new staff member for a position in their Communications Office.

Last spring, the PUSD teachers union president, Jonathan Gardner, remarked that “there’s always a position for administrators to move into,” whereas teachers don’t have such options when budget reductions come. As this partial list illustrates, he’s right.

For years, PUSD has created new out-of-classroom positions to reward allies with career advancement, provide roles for employees not yet ready to retire, or to assign specific duties. Now, as the district faces another year of demoralizing reductions, with schools organizing petitions to protect classroom teachers, one would expect the district to say “no” to more central office expansions.

But the last two positions on the list above were just created recently.

Is this ongoing culture part of the reason why yet another Chief Business Officer (CBO) is leaving the district?

Resistance to Reducing Out-of-Classroom Roles

In recent years, the district has attempted to reduce the number of Teachers on Special Assignment (TOSAs), only to face pushback from principals who rely on them to manage their demanding workloads. Some of these positions were restored—even in the face of a fiscal crisis.

Courage Is Needed to Reduce Out-of-Classroom Staff

The positions listed above, costing approximately $750,000 or more, and the TOSA roles should be included in the committee’s recommendations for cuts this year.

The district often talks about preserving classroom positions, but in practice, it seems to prioritize career advancement for allies and reducing burdens on administrators.

Board members must insist these positions be included in the committee’s recommendations. It will take courage to challenge this ingrained culture, but it’s a matter of fairness, and of protecting classrooms.

The district shouldn’t be allowed to use enrollment-based staffing ratios to justify cutting classroom teachers, while continuing to create TOSA or central office roles for staff being moved out of school sites, positions that aren’t tied to enrollment in the same way.

When enrollment declines, as it has for decades, both classroom and out-of-classroom staffing should be reduced. And no new central office positions should be created.

Walt Beckett is a resident of the San Gabriel Valley.

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