State of Schools Address Delivers Hopeful But Cautious Message

As the Pasadena Unified School District settles into its post-pandemic existence, PUSD President Kimberly Kenne delivered a hopeful yet cautious assessment of the District’s current status Tuesday evening at Octavia Butler Magnet Middle School.

Following speeches from the new PUSD Think Tank and Student Assembly board members Gabrielle Trujillo and Jade Farrise, and an introduction from Superintendent Dr. Elizabeth Blanco, Kenne cut right to the chase.

Kenne said that the District’s second interim budget was recently approved and given a positive certification by the LA County Office of Education, meaning the district can meet its fiscal obligations for this year and the next two years. 

But, warned Kenne, “This certification was reached by closing almost 175 positions for the 24-25 school year. While the number of employees who will be laid off will be far fewer due to attrition, there will be a reduction in the services that had been added using pandemic funds. We continue to work with the LA County Office of Education regarding our Fiscal Stability Plan in our efforts to reduce our future deficit spending.”

As Kenne explained, California schools are funded by Average Daily Attendance (ADA), which is affected by both enrollment and school attendance. 

“PUSD,” said Kenne,  “like most districts in California, has declining enrollment. And since the pandemic, we have seen an increase in student absenteeism as have districts nationwide.” 

To address this, she said, PUSD has invested in support to improve students’ well-being, including staffed wellness rooms at each campus. 

She noted, “While we are not yet back at pre-pandemic figures, “our absenteeism has been improving over the last two years.”

Kenne added that the District is also hobbled by the expiration of federal pandemic funding this year, the end of pandemic support for funding calculations, and the worsening of the economic situation in California. 

“This is the fiscal cliff that school districts in California are facing,” she said.

Kenne said that the District is looking at two ways to meet these challenges—increasing revenues and finding ways to reduce expenses. 

“We are in the midst of putting together an asset management plan so that we can leverage our properties to our benefit financially,” she said, without offering details. “We are also putting a parcel tax on the November ballot to help fund programs for students.” 

At the same time, she said, the district office will be evaluating its initiatives and programs to “determine the value they provide for students and to help decide where reductions can be made.”

“Conversations around ‘rightsizing’ the district will only occur upon completion of these other investigations,” said Kenne. “Any planning for future school changes will not be a rushed process and will be done with community and parent input.”

The district will also be putting a general obligation bond for facilities on the November ballot, Kenne revealed, saying, “With the large increase in construction costs and the much-needed modernization of our aging facilities, we found that we need to go back to the community in order to give our students the facilities they deserve.”

With previous Measure O funds, said Kenne, the District has been able to replace 15 roofs, put shade structures on seven campuses, refresh every student and staff electronic device, and make progress on replacing the locks on every door on school campuses and installing front entry systems to increase safety. 

“We will be making much-needed improvements at three campuses this summer and have kicked off three major projects at Longfellow, Madison and Muir,” she said.

Moving to academics, Kenne said that since January, the board has spent time reviewing the district’s performance in its three main goals – Literacy Achievement, Math Achievement and Graduating College and/or Career Ready. 

“At this point,” she said,  “we have not yet met our targets in these areas, with the exception of College and/or Career Readiness. While the targets for these goals were set after the start of the pandemic, it was difficult at that time to assess the full impact that the pandemic would have on students, both academic and emotional.

Kenne added that , “In English Language Arts, we can see that the district has been making improvements in meeting grade level proficiency prior to the pandemic and has been able to maintain most of that performance in the two years since the pandemic with 45.06% proficiency in 2022-2023.” 

PUSD is performing better than the statewide ELA results, she said, where scores went down slightly this year and are not back at pre-pandemic levels. 

In Math, overall student levels are lower than in Language Arts and the District has not yet regained its pre-pandemic levels of proficiency, with 33.95% at proficiency in 22-23. 

“These are the same trends seen statewide,” she said. “Here in PUSD, we see that even pre-pandemic,  our secondary students were struggling to make significant improvements.”

For the District’s Graduation Rate, while PUSD saw a bump in the year in which some of the graduation requirements were waived for the pandemic, Kenne said that there has not been significant growth in the last five years with the 2022-2023 rate at 84.8%. 

“However,” she added, “we have increased our percentage of students who are College and/or Career Ready from around 36% to 45% and met our target a year early.”

Finally said Kenne, “As we move forward, we need to recognize that two things can be true at the same time. Pasadena Unified has great programs, dedicated teachers and many students who are finding

success. At the same time, too many of our students are not finding that same success. Ensuring that each and every child has the opportunity to succeed is an integral part of our mission and vision for PUSD. This is the work that the board and our staff, under the leadership of Dr. Blanco, need to dedicate ourselves to, moving forward.”