Let the Hunger Games Begin

Editor’s Note: This opinion piece was published in our April 2026 print edition.

PHS, Muir, Marshall, and Blair (Photos – PUSD)

Why merging PUSD schools is driving us further apart.

By Andrew Sweet

Congratulations! Your school has been chosen to fight to the death — will you be the last school standing?

Last December, Pasadena Unified School District commissioned the Superintendent’s Consolidation Advisory Committee. This decision to commission the Committee came in the midst of a $30 million deficit for PUSD. The Committee’s goals are to find a solution to declining enrollment and funding for programs.

So far, the process has devolved into a fight for survival.

In the past three months, parents have exchanged insults, denounced biased trustees, unearthed long-abandoned civil rights offenses and criticized each other’s facilities. When adults start insulting each other, it gets ruthless.

This has trickled down to the students.

At a training event a few weeks ago, students scoffed or side-eyed each other when peers from other schools were introduced. One whispered into their friend’s ear, encouraging her to disparage a specific school in their writing assignment.

When the Save All Schools Rally took place on March 31, only students from two schools showed up. The others were reportedly out of the reaping — an us-versus-them.

Is this the right time for the district to divide our students like it’s an arena?

In the wake of the Eaton Fire, no one drew school lines. Elementary schools hosted others. Drives were organized. It was Pasadena Unified — not Pasadena Divided.

The All-Star Musical was the last time all four schools were in harmony. Students from across the district sang and dined together, even cried with one another, and visited elementary schools not as representatives of individual schools, but as ambassadors of PUSD’s secondary school system.

Elementary students did not ask which school cast members attended. They did not scoff at a name, or glance at another. They wanted to be PUSD, and nothing else.

So when did this sense of unity morph into weaponized combat?

The sense of unity burned away with the formation of the Consolidation Committee and a district-wide questionnaire decried for leading questions.

Defensive gloves came up. Hands were raised, and punches were ready to be thrown.

PHS students and parents badmouth Marshall’s academic superiority complex. Muir highlights Blair’s lack of an auditorium. Marshall scolds others for being targeted. Some put down Muir’s consistent reparation attempts. And so on…

Where did this lack of empathy for each other come from?

Maybe it is the advocates who write editorials in local newspapers. Maybe it is the parents feeding their children one-sided opinions. Maybe it is that we are so comfortable on our own campuses that the thought of another coming in to dictate what we do makes people defensive.

But the scariest thing is how little students actually know about what is happening, how little information is properly conveyed, and how poor the information channels really are. The rumor mill runs the show. If I turn to the student next to me in class tomorrow morning, there’s a 90% chance they don’t even know what consolidation means.

Ultimately, only the private schools and charters win.

I encourage students to look deeper into this issue. Form your own opinions. Write your own editorials. Maybe research some alternatives. But don’t conclude that a school should close and another should stay open because “my school is better” or “their facilities suck.”

In the end, the odds are in no one’s favor.

Andrew Sweet is a junior at a PUSD high school.