Local Electeds From City Council, PCC and PUSD to Come Together to Dialog With Residents About Public Education at Upcoming Forum

Residents will get a chance to discuss with local officials their concerns related to education, as well as other issues relevant to them at the “Your City, Your Schools” community conversation happening this Saturday, June 10 from 10 a.m.-12 p.m.

The event, aimed at improving community involvement and transparency takes place at the Pasarroyo complex at 251 S. Lake Avenue. The public can attend the event for free.

The event features presentations from Councilmember Jason Lyon, who currently serves on the Board of Zoning Appeals and former Vice Chair of the Planning Commission, Pasadena City College Board of Trustees Vice President Tammy Silver and Pasadena Unified School District Board Member Patrice Marshall McKenzie.

Lyon is expected to delve into some of the City Council’s latest actions to support public education and students in the community.

Silver said she will discuss issues facing Pasadena’s higher education such as declining enrollment.

She will also discuss the quality of education and opportunities at PCC.

“Our vision for this event was to knit together the services from the three areas of government for our community,” said Silver.

Silver expressed hopes the community conversations will continue in the future and will help make Pasadena a better place.

“The community questions can help spark ideas, and we need them. We need all the good ideas that people have,” said Silver.

McKenzie told Pasadena Now she plans to speak about preserving and promoting high-quality public schools and ongoing available funding opportunities to grow and expand programs.

She will also discuss other concerns on housing affordability and teacher compensation, among other issues.

“One thing that I’m really excited about with this event in terms of community engagement is it’s an opportunity to demonstrate how different levels of government can work together,” McKenzie said.

While the City Council, PCC Board and PUSD Board all care about public education, McKenzie said more work needs to be done to push all of these agencies to work together collaboratively to solve pressing issues.

“Different branches of government can work together around a common issue. I think that there are a number of times when either City Council or PCC or other levels of government really care about public education but we’re not always talking across organizations, across agencies in that way. One of the things that I ran on as a candidate was wanting to be able to create opportunities for these sorts of cross-agency and cross-organizational dialogues to take place.”

“So we’re really excited to come together to have this discussion, to be able to talk to our neighbors and constituents about what we’re doing from our respective vantage points to support public education and support students in our community.”

Following each of their presentations, the officials will take questions from the members of the community and respond to them.

McKenzie said they will gather input of members of the community and raise these before their respective agencies.

McKenzie expressed hopes the inaugural event will continue annually, with county and state officials joining in in the future.

Lyon, too, said he hopes for more events like Your City, Your Schools, with other government officials and councilmembers from other districts to foster intergovernmental collaboration.