Making School Enrollment Decisions for Next Year and New to Pasadena?

PUSD Graduate Destinations Map (Photo – PEF)

With the turn of the calendar to 2023, many families may be thinking about where to send their children to school next fall.

By Scott Phelps

Families that are new to Pasadena may benefit from a visit to the Pasadena Unified (PUSD) website.  From PUSD’s Open Enrollment webpage: “While every child living within PUSD boundaries is assured placement in their neighborhood school, a different campus might offer a specialized program or focus that better meets the interests and needs of the individual student. PUSD’s annual Open Enrollment process offers families an opportunity to apply to attend a school other than their neighborhood school in the next academic year.” This page, contains the information about this process, and the timelines involved. For example the time period for the first lottery opportunity to apply for a school outside of one’s residence area is right now, January 9 to January 27, 2023.

With the coming of this annual season wherein parents make decisions on where to enroll their children for next year, I thought I would highlight some of the great preparation that Pasadena Unified (PUSD) provides for its graduates. A couple years ago Pasadena Unified School District (PUSD) began listing on its website the names of the great colleges its graduates were accepted to each year. At the Class of 2022 page, (found at this link), one can read about the outstanding valedictorians of PUSD’s high schools and where they were headed to this past fall for their college careers (UCLA, UC Berkeley, USC, Harvard, Yale, Brown and Emerson College.) This year, Pasadena Educational Foundation (PEF) staff have converted this information into a map which accompanies this article, so one can really “see” that PUSD grads attend great colleges throughout the state, country and internationally.

As I said, every child living within PUSD boundaries is assured placement in their neighborhood school, but this page online, contains the information about applying for another PUSD school in the next academic year.