GUEST OPINION
PUSD Board Special Meeting, July 16, 2026 (File Photo – Screengrab, KLRN)
PUSD trustees met on August 13 regarding a visioning “transformation” process. On review, I am concerned that PUSD is heading toward another costly school-closure process that may not comply with California Attorney General and Department of Justice guidelines.
By Lisa Kroese
PUSD has spent significant money on consultants and legal issues surrounding consolidation. We cannot afford more mistakes.
The August 13 worksheet identifies ten consolidation scenarios. Why is the community seeing a regurgitation of already rejected scenarios? After months of public comment and community engagement, how much attention does the worksheet give to alternatives?
It says, “Alternative scenarios if no school closures are done,” followed by “Stanford Study.” Ten complete closure scenarios versus ten words about alternatives.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta has warned districts that closure decisions must protect vulnerable students from disparate harm. The CA DOJ has cautioned that seemingly neutral metrics, including enrollment, capacity, and facility condition, can create unlawful discriminatory effects when applied without examining whom they burden and the relevant historical context.
The worksheet says there will be “no adverse impact” on vulnerable students. Yet its detailed notes include a direction to “balance out SPED special day students across all sites.”
Redistributing students, including students in protected groups through closures, is not the same as analyzing whether closing a particular school would disproportionately affect them.
Targeted schools serve substantial populations of students with disabilities and socioeconomically disadvantaged students, or both. Before ANY schools are targeted, PUSD should determine where those students would go, based on input from affected families. Would programs and services be maintained? What transportation burdens would families face? How would feeder patterns change? Would segregation increase?
Why are some PUSD Board members targeting specific schools before answering these questions for all schools? Parent leaders and staff are reporting that this is already affecting PUSD’s balance sheet and district-wide equity.
For months, community members have urged the PUSD Board to focus on new Stanford research concluding that districts pursuing closures should make revenue optimization a “first-order priority,” particularly in urban districts. Yet research, and the potential effect of closures on enrollment, is routinely dismissed by pro-closure PUSD Board members. Parents, who raise valid questions, are sometimes characterized as self-centered, rather than answered. How does that foster community engagement?
Then there are the data sets for closure criteria, including facility condition. If we do not yet know whether closures are necessary, why are we establishing closure criteria first?
PUSD voters authorized more than $1.4 billion for school facilities through Measures O and R. California DOJ has warned against using facility conditions in closure decisions without examining historical inequities in capital investment.
The reason is simple: A district cannot underinvest in a school and later use the resulting condition as evidence that the school should disappear.
Before facility condition counts against any school, PUSD needs to examine what Measures Y, TT, O, and R promised, what each campus actually received, and which improvements were delayed, deferred, or canceled.
Engaged parents and neighbors are asking: What combination of revenue generation, asset management, attendance gains, and responsible reductions will produce the best students and strongest schools five, ten, and twenty years from now?
A school district trying to solve financial problems cannot afford a process that risks losing families, losing attendance revenue, and generating another round of expensive legal trouble.
Ten closure scenarios and one line about alternatives do not constitute transformative visioning. I hope we can do better soon. Our children deserve more than the same failed and rejected scenarios repeated over and over again.
Lisa Kroese is a PUSD Parent and the Pasadena Unified School District’s PTA Council President. The opinions expressed are her own and not on behalf of any organization.
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