Guest Opinion | Lisa Kroese: Board President Can’t Blame Staff For Leadership Failures

The employee who acknowledged failing to post Monday’s special-meeting agendas cannot be made the scapegoat for a special meeting notification that never should have been imposed on staff or the public in the first place.

The agendas reportedly distributed after 9 p.m. Friday for two Monday meetings—including an 8:30 p.m. meeting addressing school consolidation. Expecting staff to complete legally required public-notice duties after normal working hours on a Friday, for meetings scheduled immediately after the weekend, was an unreasonable exercise of the board president’s authority.

There is no an emergency that required a special meeting on Monday night announced after hours on a Friday. PUSD had positively certified its Second Interim financial report, indicating that it expected to meet its obligations through 2027–28. The district faces serious structural deficits, but parents and community leaders are urging community input and alternatives based on new research. No evidence has been presented showing that school-closure criteria and timelines had to be decided on Monday.

California’s newly enacted budget also provides schools with increased funding and major new investments in special education and community schools. That does not eliminate PUSD’s financial challenges. It does mean the board should evaluate updated revenue, enrollment, recovery, housing, rebuilding, asset management, and program information before making irreversible decisions.

The rushed schedule violates PUSD’s Resolution 2894. That resolution offered to “rebuild trust,” engage the community throughout the transformation process, incorporate feedback from the prior consolidation process, gather the community’s values and vision for the next five to ten years, and prioritize student input.

A real visioning process will take time. It begins by asking families, students, educators and residents what kind of district they wan. Tina Fredericks hopes to select closure criteria and voting dates before that vision has even been developed.

The California Attorney General and Department of Justice have warned districts that school closures can cause educational disruption and emotional distress. Their guidance calls for robust community engagement and careful examination of transportation, environmental conditions, special programs, student demographics and the historical distribution of resources. DOJ has specifically cautioned that seemingly neutral measures such as enrollment, capacity, facility condition and operating costs can disproportionately harm students with disabilities and other high-needs populations.

Giving the public the barest possible notice—assuming the notice is legally sufficient at all—does not satisfy those standards. Neither does scheduling a closure meeting at 8:30 p.m. on a school night.

It seems that the Board President is attempting to accelerate closure decisions immediately before a November board election and before her term as Board President expires. Her meetings are being driven by her own desire for political control rather than fiscal or educational necessity. The board president’s annual leadership term is not a legitimate deadline for community visioning or for closing schools.

Monday’s breakdown was therefore more than a forgotten piece of paper. It was the foreseeable consequence of an unnecessarily compressed process.

PUSD should honor Resolution 2894 as written: conduct genuine visioning, incorporate updated state and local financial information, complete a credible equity analysis, and provide families and employees with meaningful opportunities to participate.

Transformation cannot rebuild trust if it is rushed through before the community has a chance to be heard.

Lisa Kroese, PUSD PTA Council President (for informational purposes only), and PUSD Parent