Fire, layoffs, fewer students: Pasadena Unified's struggle to stay solvent

Joy McCReary's advanced literary class in the 12th grade had just ended at the Blair Middle and High School when a substitute teacher came to relieve her. McCReary was needed in the headmaster's office. She felt what would come.

Pasadena Unified School District, which was brewed by years of recording and effort with the description of the federal funds in the pandemic era, had to be $ 12 million from her budget and the school authority had just voted to send provisional knowledge of discharge from teachers. McCReary, which is seventh month pregnant, calculated a simple calculation: “The golden rule is first first. The writing was on the wall. I can calculate, I can count the positions. ”

The 28 -year -old McCreeary started collecting her things. The students noticed. “You asked, 'What's going on?' And I said, “I said,” she said.

Then she asked her: “You can't leave us.”

Pasadena Unified is not just districts from Santa Ana to San Francisco, among other things, with deteriorated financial prospects and potential cuts.

But none of these districts also dealt with the fatal Eaton fire.

The Pasadena Unified layoffs – the approximately 150 jobs, almost 120 of them certified positions, which are mainly held by teachers, could not have come at a lesser time. The deep-seated financial problems of the district of a budget deficit of $ 37 million must only be partially treated by the layoffs-with the profound damage of the January fire crisis.

“This is not ideal; This is a terrible time to do this, ”said Elizabeth Blanco. “But the alternatives are also very dark. As the leader of the district, we have the responsibility to lead [it] On fiscal health. ”

Pasadena Unified is besieged by financial problems for years, some of which were caused by dwindling enrollment. In a district in which around 21,000 students were located in 2005, less than 14,000 now has. The Exodus, which has led a lack of affordable living space in the region, a wealth of Charter school options and a competitive private school market, has led to five district campus since 2018.

The latest pink briefs that will be completed in May were a necessary step to avoid bankruptcy, said Blanco. The job cuts were approved by the Pasadena Unified Board of Education in a 6-1 vote at his meeting on February 27th.

The reductions were in progress in front of the Eaton fire, which according to United Teachers of Pasadena destroyed the houses of around 90 Pasadena Unified Teachers. At least one handful of this fire sacrifice were also geared towards layoffs, said the union.

“Nobody wants to release our esteemed colleagues,” said Saman Bravo-Karimi, Chief Business Officer from Pasadena Unified. “We wish it would not be necessary, especially under the circumstances.”

In more than four hours, teachers and parents pleaded to the board at the meeting in February to find an alternative to the cuts and to deliver one emphatic volley after the other. Elizabeth Gardner, mother of two children at the Altadena Arts Magnet School, told the board that the rejection of teachers in a school in which many families had been uprooted by the fire, how “a dog occurred when they are already below” and trigger loud applause.

Zeidi Bernardo, teacher at the Pasadena High School, wore a “Game of Thrones” t -shirt and warned the board that “these cuts are made [is] Like a sleeping dragon ”, an indication of the mythical, fire breathing creatures that were an important part of the television series.

“These cuts … feel personally,” she said.

A beaten district

In California, public school financing is largely determined by average daily number of visitors. The loss of around 33% of students over two decades therefore had a slow yet in -depth influence on the balance of Pasadena Unified.

The district received financial help from Covid-19 during emergency: around $ 62 million in pandemic aid funds in the amount of states. According to the district, the money paid the efforts to expand Pasadena Unified's health and wellness program, which included more than 20 teachers, and made it possible to “increase” other services in order to support the recovery of the disaster of public health. Funding also strengthened Pasadena Unified's financial reserves, which made it possible for him to give teachers increases, added the district. But the money was completely spent on the end of the school year 2023-24, said Bravo-Karimi.

Jonathan Gardner, President of the Pasadena Teachers Union – and husband of Elizabeth Gardner – said that the auxiliary fee was used by the district to justify an increase in expenses for contractual services and “many administrative offices”. But when it was time for layoffs, there were “minimal cuts” for these jobs.

Immediately after the Eaton Fire, Bravo-Karimi turned to the financial crisis and the management support of the state, which helps the school districts to be controlled in financial issues. “I said:” We are faced with these considerable financial challenges … The circumstances are so terrible, what are we doing? “, He said.

The team of the team, said Bravo-Karimi, consisted of “making every reduction before the fire, which unfortunately contains layoffs. The reasons we had received: We have to prove financial responsibility. “

The problem in the question is the view of the control of Pasadena Unified Ceding in the state of California. Blanco warned of the school authority: “If we do nothing and the district finances continue to deteriorate, the state will be obliged to intervene and take over.”

She referred to a number of measures that occur when a school district requested that the state have to remain a solvent. After the granting of these funds, a district is taken into the reception and adopted by the State Ministry of Education. The district's superintendent is removed and his board loses decision -making power, among other things.

“Our agency deals with the early warning sign of a district that has an emergency in its budget so that we can turn it around so that they do not become insolvent insolvent,” said Michael Fine, managing director of Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team.

For the school year 2025-26 from Pasadena Unified, $ 5 million of the cuts from layoffs of classroom staff and around $ 7 million from layoffs in the central office of the district. This does not remove the deficit in full-but Bravo-Karimi said the reductions “are the amount of which we thought we could implement at this point.”

Blanco, a former teacher, said the layoffs were crushed: “We are isolated here in our grief.”

Months of misery

When spring approaches, a bleak annual rite in school districts all over California takes place: the provision of reduction note exchanges for teachers.

According to state law, districts must inform teachers about possible reductions in the staff for the next school year. Sometimes the communications are canceled. This was the case with many recipients in Pasadena Unified last year after most prospective layoffs were avoided.

But Fine said Pasadena Unified “can no longer step down the street.”

And this year the Eaton Fire threw a long shadow – especially for teachers who have lost their houses.

Like Micah Alden.

When the fire broke through Altadena, Alden's new house burned in the foothills. The Blair Middle and High School teacher and her husband had only bought the property a few weeks earlier, and it was supposed to have been her quiet harbor – a place where you could raise your little son.

It got worse: the apartment that the English teacher and her family had rented nearby was also destroyed. The 32 -year -old Alden has suffered an amazing kind of grief. And yet she wanted to be at school with her students.

“I wanted to go to work even on the worst days of my life,” said Alden, who joined the district in 2021 and feared that she could lose her job in the middle of the layoffs. “My students are my children.”

When she was not pulled out of her classroom for a meeting on March 3, Alden knew that her work was safe. But she stays qualified and thinks of McCReary, her friend and co -blair teacher.

For his part, McCReary is concerned about entering motherhood in the river. “I can't be without health insurance,” she said. “I can't be without a stable source of income.”

Some of McCReary's students lost their houses in the Eaton Fire. Many were driven out by the fire, which taps some with trauma, whose healing could take years. What you need now, she believes, is stability. “I am a stable person in her life who has invested a lot in her,” McCreacy Sasid.

But at least she still has her home.

Gardner, the president of the union, said about a dozen teachers whose houses were burned as knowledge of discharge, but the numbers have not yet been confirmed.

Further uncertainties about the district: It is not known how many families will return in the next school year. And fewer students mean fewer funds.

Nevertheless, Fine sees reasons to be optimistic. “There is nothing that I know about Pasadena's board or leadership role to ask myself that they are well informed to make the right decisions,” he said. “I can't say that about every district.”

For McCReary, however, this is a phase of concern. For themselves and their students. And she thought in the afternoon when she was called out of her classroom.

“Obviously, selfish, I want a job, but … they teach because they love children and because they want to serve public education,” she said. “It was the most difficult part of the day for me – to see them angered.”

The layoffs come into force on June 30th.