Consultant Hands School Board a Campus Closures Roadmap, Even After Advisory Panel Says No

An outside consulting firm engaged by Pasadena Unified School District has delivered to the Board of Education a draft Equity Impact Analysis that models school closure and consolidation scenarios across the district — including the potential shuttering of high school and elementary campusess and multiple middle-grade programs — handing trustees a scenario-by-scenario roadmap even though the Superintendent’s own advisory committee voted earlier this month to recommend no closures at all.

The draft analysis, prepared by Total School Solutions and scheduled for presentation to the Board on Thursday, May 28, applies the nine metrics required under Assembly Bill 1912 to each scenario. The result is a state-mandated equity review that remains on the table regardless of what the Superintendent’s School Consolidation Advisory Committee recommended, and one the Board may adopt, modify or decline to consider.

Under AB 1912, the equity analysis proceeds on a track separate from the committee’s advisory vote. By preserving and analyzing every option the committee considered, Total School Solutions’ report makes all the scenarios available for the Board’s consideration on June 25, 2026, when trustees are expected to take final action.

What the Consultant Analyzed

The draft analysis evaluates two clusters of scenarios. The first concerns TK-5 and TK-8 campuses: closing Don Benito Elementary and sending its students to Willard; closing Webster Elementary and redirecting students to Longfellow and Norma Coombs; closing Norma Coombs and sending its students to Webster; and a two-part McKinley option that would move its middle-grade program to Eliot Middle School and split its elementary students among Hamilton, Madison and Washington.

The second cluster examines secondary schools. It considers closing Thurgood Marshall and absorbing its students into Pasadena High School, along with three variations for closing Blair High School. Because Blair serves both middle-grade and high school students, each variation pairs a middle-grade reassignment with a high school reassignment: Blair’s middle-grade students would be reassigned to either Thurgood Marshall Middle School or Octavia E. Butler Middle School, and its high school students routed to Pasadena High or John Muir High.

Each scenario was run against the full AB 1912 framework, which requires districts to evaluate the condition of a school facility; operating costs and projected savings from closure; the capacity of receiving schools to absorb additional students; the transferability of special programs; environmental factors such as traffic and freeway proximity; the demographic balance of affected students, including students of color, English learners, students with disabilities, foster youth and homeless youth; transportation needs; aesthetic and blight effects on surrounding neighborhoods; and the impact on feeder-school attendance patterns.

Beyond the state-required metrics, the Board added two of its own: where students live geographically, and current enrollment.

By Pasadena Now’s count of the consultant’s deck, the analysis covers nine distinct closure options — five at the TK-6 level and four at the secondary level — though the document itself does not state a total.

Why the Analysis Exists at All

The pressure driving the review is demographic, and it is not abating. Pasadena Unified School District enrolled 17,178 students in 2015-16. By 2025-26, that figure had dropped to 13,228 — a loss of nearly 4,000 students, or roughly 23 percent, in 11 years. The decline has been continuous, with no year of recovery projected, according to enrollment data presented in the draft.

In December 2025, the Board adopted Resolution 2852, which set minimum, optimal and maximum enrollment thresholds for each grade configuration. Elementary schools are deemed below minimum enrollment at 300 students; middle schools at 400; high schools at 900; and combined TK-8 or 6-12 campuses at 700.

Those thresholds are what put consolidation on the table.

The Board also set four desired outcomes for the review: that the process identify operational efficiencies and program duplications whether or not consolidation followed; that the district demonstrate clear cost savings; that the future student experience be clearly defined; and that the community be kept informed throughout.

The Committee’s Role — and Its Limit

The advisory committee, drawn from more than 150 applicants and seated with 33 members, met seven times between February 3 and May 11, 2026. It reviewed the consultant’s scenarios in two waves — TK-8 options presented on April 13, secondary options on April 27 — and on May 11 voted against each one. The closest margin came on the two McKinley scenarios, which failed 13 to 16 and 12 to 17. The proposal to close Norma Coombs drew the strongest opposition, failing 8 to 21.

The committee’s final vote tally, as recorded in the draft, leaves two procedural questions unanswered. Although Webster Elementary was analyzed by Total School Solutions as a standalone closure scenario, no separate Webster vote appears in the committee’s final results. And although the consultant modeled three distinct Blair High School variations, the committee recorded only a single Blair vote — 10 in favor of closure, 19 opposed — with receiving schools listed as John Muir High and Octavia Butler Middle School. The draft does not explain how the three analyzed variations were consolidated into one vote, or which variation was actually before the committee.

The committee’s vote is advisory. The equity analysis itself proceeds on a separate track required by state law, and Total School Solutions has now delivered that analysis to the Board with every scenario intact. If trustees decide to modify any option — for instance, pairing a Blair closure with a different receiving school than the committee considered — an updated equity analysis would be required, and the implementation timeline could shift.

What’s Required if the Board Acts

AB 1912 imposes additional obligations on the district if any closure is approved. The law requires that families be notified in their primary language and that notices include the date of approved closure, the student’s new school choices under open enrollment, transition resources and a district contact for further information. The law also requires that the district document the factors used to identify candidate schools, publish equity findings for each option, outline a plan for any vacated facility, describe the criteria for reassigning displaced students, and provide a transition timeline that addresses safe routes to school and home-to-school transportation needs.

The draft analysis on the table Thursday does not yet constitute a final equity finding. Total School Solutions notes in the deck that complete details are contained in the full May 28, 2026, Draft Equity Impact Analysis Report.

The Calendar Ahead

The May 28, 2026, Board meeting will mark the formal transmission of the committee’s recommendations to trustees and, if any school closures are recommended, the first public hearing on the draft analysis.

A second public hearing is scheduled for the June 11 Board meeting, with public comment taken. The Board will hold a study session on June 13, 2026, and is expected to consider approval of any school closures at its June 25, 2026, meeting.