State Ties $11.8 Million Grant to Hearing on Pasadena Unified Enrollment Decline, Closures

The Pasadena Unified School District will receive about $11.8 million in one-time state money that requires the district to hold a public hearing on how it will address declining enrollment, including school closures and consolidations, the district’s chief business officer told the Board of Education on Thursday.

The disclosure came in the district’s 45-day budget revision, an update to the adopted budget that districts must make available for public review within 45 days of the governor signing the annual Budget Act.

Two conditions attach to the money.

The first requires districts in declining enrollment, or projected to be within five years, to hold a public hearing on plans to address the impact, including school closures or consolidation. Pasadena Unified falls within that category, Arik Avanesyans said. The law does not specify when the hearing must occur.

The second condition bars districts from charging employees fees for professional services, including induction and professional development costs. The district is awaiting a frequently asked questions document from the state to determine whether that applies only to programs a district operates or also to outside programs employees enroll in, Avanesyans said. If the state determines the broader reading applies, the district may have to reimburse employees who have already paid those costs.

Board President Tina Fredericks asked whether the district’s coming process meetings would satisfy the public hearing requirement. Avanesyans said the state has not clearly defined the requirement and he could not say either way, though the topics expected to be discussed track the language in the law.

The board voted June 25 to adopt Resolution 2894, establishing a district transformation process. The resolution restarts the consolidation process under a different name, a student board member told the district trustees Thursday, saying the Student Assembly had cast a preferential vote against forming the resolution’s committee and received no verbal response.

Prior grant went to pensions without a board vote

Trustee Kimberly Kenne said the district is already applying one-time block grant money to an ongoing expense — pension costs — and asked when the board approved that.

There was no specific board item on the question, Avanesyans said. The grant was included in the fiscal stability plan and in the adopted budget and was mentioned briefly in those presentations, but there was no thorough or robust discussion of it. Offsetting rising pension costs is listed as past practice for the grant in the district’s 45-day revision presentation. The grant is not new and first paid out last year, Avanesyans said.

Kenne asked when the board would decide how to spend the new $11.8 million and whether staff would bring a proposal or the board would need to agendize one. Avanesyans said the decision would begin with the senior leadership team and could be brought to the board as a separate item, and that the amount is significant enough that the board should have the discussion. He said he does not anticipate grants of this kind in the future because the state had an unusually strong revenue year.

No date was set Thursday for that discussion.

Parents point to the money

Madison Elementary parents used public comment to ask the board to restore community assistant Maria Perez to full time at the school, citing one-time grant funding the district will be receiving. Ana Portillo told the board that the county office of education funds community schools to operate as hubs that increase parent engagement and safety. A second speaker said parents and the principal submitted a petition on May 28 and have received no answer.

Trustee Scott Harden asked whether the block grant could restore programs or positions cut in last year’s reductions, naming community assistants.

Because the state gave the money one time, it is best practice not to apply it to ongoing costs, Avanesyans said, adding that the district should consider how to make the funds last while helping areas where it made reductions.

Avanesyans also said the discretionary grant would be well suited to enrollment marketing, in response to a question from Trustee Bailey about funding efforts to promote enrollment.

What the revision leaves out

The revision does not include $4 million allocated to Pasadena Unified under Assembly Bill 126, directed in the 2026-27 fiscal year toward outstanding and ongoing recovery-related costs stemming from the state of emergency the governor declared in January 2025. The district has no information yet on the resource code or restrictions attached to it.

The money had been expected to arrive through principal apportionment, which is not the case, Avanesyans said, and the district is waiting to hear from the California Department of Education on how it will be paid. He said the district hopes to receive it in time to include it at first interim.

The revision does include the Learning Recovery Emergency Block Grant, resource 7435, estimated at $228 per unit of average daily attendance and totaling $2,033,532 this fiscal year. The state had decided not to fund the program and reversed course at the last moment, Avanesyans said.

The board adopted a spending plan for earlier money from the program on Aug. 24, 2023. Allowable uses include increasing instructional days or minutes, summer or intersession programs, tutoring and small-group support, early intervention and literacy programs for preschool through third grade, expanded learning opportunity services, community schools services, professional development and coaching on the state mathematics and English language arts frameworks, health and mental health services, credit recovery for students short of graduation requirements, and diagnostic and benchmark assessment.

Expenses for both restricted programs were left out of the revision, and both resources are restricted, so neither affects the district’s unrestricted ending fund balance. Because the district will book the revenue without yet booking the expenses, its restricted fund balance will increase, Avanesyans said.

The revision also flagged a new employee leave benefit created in the state budget: 14 weeks of paid pregnancy disability leave beginning Jan. 1, 2027, limited to employees experiencing or having experienced pregnancy, and applying to certificated, administrative and classified employees alike. Substitutes and temporary employees are not covered, a point trustees returned to later in the meeting during debate over temporary certificated contracts. Costs for the benefit were also left out of the revision, and the district is working with human resources to project them.

A 45-day revision may take any form and does not require a standardized SACS document. It must only be made available for public review, and Thursday’s presentation satisfies that requirement, Avanesyans said.

Once the accounting treatment of the AB 126 money and the cost of the new leave benefit are known, both will be reported at first interim.

The district is closing its 2025-26 books and will bring unaudited actuals to the board in September, ahead of the Sept. 15 deadline to submit them to the county office of education. The audit for that year is expected in December or January 2027, and first interim is scheduled for December.

California’s budget was signed June 29, triggering Education Code Section 42127(i)(4) and setting a deadline of Aug. 13 for the district to make its revisions public under the Budget Act of 2026, SB 101.

The revised budget narrative was posted with the meeting agenda on Aug. 4.

The board earlier adopted its 2026-27 budget on June 25 with a positive certification, built on the May Revise, which projected a 4.31% increase in Local Control Funding Formula revenue.

The revision was agendized as a presentation item requiring no board vote.

The money comes through the Student Support and Professional Development Discretionary Block Grant, resource 6019, estimated at $930 per unit of average daily attendance for the 2026-27 fiscal year and totaling $11,801,644. The state created the program to give districts discretionary funds to address rising costs and fund specified state priorities. The state funded it as one-time money rather than raising districts’ base apportionment because it lacks confidence in the ongoing revenue, Chief Business Officer Arik Avanesyans said.

The district has until June 30, 2029, to spend it. Districts must report final expenditures to the California Department of Education by Sept. 30, 2029, and the state will begin collecting any unspent money no later than Jan. 31, 2030.

The board’s facilities committee meets Tuesday at 6 p.m. in the boardroom.