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View Winners → Budget Crisis: PUSD May Consolidate Five School Next Year
Education Mar 02, 2018
The campaign is aimed to help students miss less than five days of the school year. – Courtesy photo
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Pasadena Unified School District. – Courtesy photo
By Terry Miller
According to The Superintendent’s School Consolidation and Boundary Committee [SSCBC], five schools face potential closure/ consolidation in the next school year.
The committee agreed that “minimizing the number of students impacted was not as important as the other considerations.
“The committee supports the consolidation of secondary schools over elementary schools. Elementary schools should be supported because they are the gateway into PUSD, healthier elementary programs are needed to feed secondary programs.
The consolidation of secondary schools will yield more cost savings due to the size of the facilities, this will also result in larger student populations at the remaining schools which will naturally create more programmatic opportunity.
The committee believes that the increased saturation of charter schools in Altadena has a detrimental impact to the community.
The consolidation of an elementary facility will lead to a cascading reduction of enrollment at the secondary level.
The committee strongly recommends the district should use vacated facilities or spaces to house existing programs in need of space before considering offers to outside entities.
The SSCBC strongly urges the Superintendent, executive staff, and the School Board to seriously consider implementing these recommendations to the greatest extent possible.
The following facilities are recommended for consolidation by the SSCBC. The table below shows the sentiment of the committee taken in a straw pole at the last committee meeting.
– Wilson Middle School
– Blair High School
– Jefferson Elementary
– Cleveland Elementary
– Franklin Elementary
The report gives five recommendations for closure and consolidation into other schools. It notes that “any one of the recommendations can be taken a-la-cart, or all them can be taken together.” The schools included are:
The district has already identified $14.3 million in possible cuts for the 2018-19 school year. The Los Angeles County Office of Education is keeping an eye on the district’s finances to ensure its solvency.
