Board President Tina Fredericks and Board member Scott Harden at the PUSD Board of Education Special Meeting, May 14, 2026 (Photos – Special to Colorado Boulevard Newspaper)
A group of Pasadena Unified School District parents has launched a recall campaign targeting Board President Tina Fredericks and Board member Scott Harden. Parents allege violations of California’s open meeting law and a lack of transparency surrounding PUSD’s ongoing school consolidation process.
By Rena Kurlander
The effort includes the launch of a website, Recall Tina Fredericks, which publishes documents, timelines, and correspondence related to PUSD’s consolidation planning efforts. Organizers say they also are gathering signatures for Notices of Intention to recall both Fredericks and Harden.
Central to the recall campaign is a May 15 letter sent to the PUSD Board by parent Warren Bleeker. He alleges that Board members engaged in unlawful serial meetings in violation of the Brown Act before initiating PUSD’s consolidation process.
In the letter, Bleeker called on PUSD to immediately halt all actions connected to Board Resolution 2852, including the District Transformation Planning Process, Equity Impact Analysis, and any future votes related to school closures. The letter warns that failure to suspend the process within 30 days could result in litigation seeking judicial invalidation of future PUSD Board actions tied to the resolution.
The recall website includes a timeline from last fall and winter detailing communications between PUSD Board members, which organizers describe as a preexisting consolidation plan developed by Fredericks before PUSD’s advisory committee meetings began.
Parents involved in the effort say the newly released documents confirm longstanding concerns about transparency and community engagement.
“The recall effort is about restoring public trust,” said parent Dawn Denison. “Instead of transparency and meaningful community engagement, they’ve committed Brown Act violations, conducted closed-door decision making, and decided on an approach that treats schools as real estate assets rather than essential community institutions.”
Denison added that PUSD recently received a positive financial certification from the Los Angeles County Office of Education, but rebuilding confidence in PUSD leadership would require “honest leadership and open public conversations.”
Briana Pollard, a parent at Don Benito Elementary, described the revelations as “a betrayal.”
“If the plan all along was consolidation, then parents deserved honesty before the election, not after,” Pollard said. “You can’t ask families to campaign for public education and then turn around and dismantle the communities that carried you into office.”
Ashley Lincoln, another Don Benito parent, criticized what she described as Fredericks’ handling of campus investment decisions.
“Regardless of how anyone feels about the budgetary issues in PUSD or the potential for school consolidation, the community relies on our elected officials to follow the law, keep their promises for transparency, and to listen to their constituents,” Lincoln said. “President Fredericks has failed on all three fronts, and a change is in order.”
Fiona Burgos, a parent of two students at Blair School, said families were led to believe PUSD’s consultant-driven process would be objective and community-informed.
“Now we find out that a majority of the Board had decided in advance what the outcome should be,” Burgos said. “Momentous decisions that greatly impact our kids should not be made via shady, backroom deals.”
In a statement sent Friday, Fredericks acknowledged the controversy surrounding the process, but did not directly address the allegations.
“We understand this process has raised strong feelings and important questions in our community,” Fredericks said. “The Board is evaluating the allegations and determining appropriate next steps to ensure continued transparency in the governance process. However, because this is an ongoing matter, I cannot provide additional comments at this time.”
The recall campaign follows months of community concern over potential school closures and PUSD consolidation efforts, which intensified after reporting by Colorado Boulevard examined PUSD’s internal planning process and parent concerns over transparency.
They need to get these people out and reexamine how much money has been wasted and the people should not be in the dark this happened in 1970 and keeps going !
Interesting that Ms. Uriu, a well-known Muir supporter, feels this is a waste of time and money, but the dishonest and unnecessary hiring of a $230K+ consultant to just tell the committee what the predetermined plan was, thereby wasting many weeks of the committee members’ time and the money for the cost of the consultant, wasn’t a waste of time and money? Not to mention that rigging things for certain outcomes, telling lies about how it was an impartial and transparent process, the illegality of making decisions outside of public meetings, all are just wrong and a violation of the trust that the community places in “trustees.” Of course her view is understandable given that the predetermined plan was designed to benefit Muir and PHS.
This feels like a huge waste of time and money.
They could prevent that by stepping down.