The Pasadena Unified School District Board of Education is scheduled to return Thursday evening to a discussion halted on Aug. 31, meeting once again as a Committee of the Whole to edit a draft definition of the “District Transformation Process” — after Monday’s meeting was declared to be in violation of the Brown Act and abruptly canceled midstream.
The process traces to Resolution 2894, which initiated the District Transformation Process and replaced Resolution 2852, the optimal-school-size resolution that began last school year’s school consolidation process.
The definition they approve would set the terms of a process that the draft describes as spanning the next five to 10 years and culminating in Board votes on existing assets, programs, and student opportunities, as well as campus consolidations.
No official decisions can be made at the session. Sitting as a Committee of the Whole, the Board cannot take official action, and the meeting is set aside for discussion only.
Board members, who are expected to have reviewed the Aug. 31 facilitation notes and the draft in advance, are to share suggested edits and additions so that a finalized definition can be recommended for approval at a subsequent regular Board meeting.
Final authority to adopt the definition rests with the Board of Education acting at a regular meeting.
Natalia Guerra, director of community partnerships and impact at Collaborate PASadena, who is scheduled to facilitate Thursday’s session, says in prepared remarks that the Board’s earlier conversation on the process did not name school consolidation as a prescriptive or necessary outcome, and that what she heard instead included calls to consider alternatives — among them future vision-casting alongside community members and analyzing the impact of inaction on consolidation.
By the end of the process, the Board would vote on how to manage existing assets — including considering alternatives to school consolidation and analyzing the impact of inaction on consolidation — how to use closed campuses for revenue, how to sustain programs the community values and how to expand opportunities for all students.
The draft also calls for the Board to decide on a committee structure to steward the work, and for district leadership to adopt a community report and vision as a “community transformation framework” to be referenced throughout the process.
Thursday’s condensed discussion is planned to run no more than an hour and a half.
The Pasadena Unified School District Board of Education is scheduled to meet as a Committee of the Whole in a special meeting at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 3, in the Elbie J. Hickambottom Board Room, Room 236, 351 S. Hudson Ave., in Pasadena, with a teleconference location at 595 N. Garfield Ave.
The full agenda and attachments are available at www.BoardMeetings.info.
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