Music . . Thank you. . . . you and Okay. Are we ready? Yes. Welcome everyone to our special meeting with our colleagues at the passing unified school district. I'd like to welcome the school board and ask to start in our school board president Jennifer Halle will take roll call and then I'll turn it over to Ms. Halle to make some opening comments. Council Member Cole. Present. Council Member Hampton. Blessed honor to be here. Council Member Jones. Chair. Council Member Lyon. Chair. Councilmember Madison. Here. Councilmember Mesuda. Here. Vice Mayor Rivas. Here. Mayor Gordo. Here. There's a quorum the council president. Board member Harden. Here. Board member Kinney. Here. Board member McKenzie. It's not in the room yet. Board member Richardson Bailey. Here. Board Member Velasquez is not here. Vice President Fredrick's. Yeah. for Richardson Bailey. Here. Board Member Velasquez is not here. Vice President Fredrick's. Here. And President Holly. Here. There is a quorum of the board present. Thank you. I would invite the school board president Jennifer Holley to just make some opening comments. But before I did, you wanted to do the- Oh, I'm sorry, Pledge of Allegiance. Ms. Hawley, we'll do the pleasure of allegiance. Thank you. Any hand over your heart? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which a sense one nation under God is indefisible with liberty and justice for all. On behalf of the City Council and the City staff and our city manager, I'd like to welcome our school board colleagues and staff, Mr. Jennifer Hawley. I'm here today. We are here. The board is here. Thank you so much for having us every year. This is always a good time for us to kind of get together and get to know each other again and reestablish our ties, which are common in our community. And we have our Board of Trustees here. We have our Superintendent, Dr. Elizabeth J. Blanco, and we have our senior leadership team. Our theme has been this year the power of us and the Eaton Fire has certainly created an opportunity for us to solidify our bonds together and to work for our community. So thank you. Thank you and on behalf of the council we too look forward to continuing our partnership serving our community. So thank you. Thank you and on behalf of the council we too look forward to continuing our partnership and serving our community as best as best we can together. With that we do have an adjournment that I would ask we make Mr. Madison and I served with Chris Holden who recently lost his father Nate Holden also a public servant at the state level and the city council level. Mr. Madison, you wanted to thank you Mayor. I think it'd be fully appropriate based on Chris Holden's long service on the council to adjourn tonight in memory and honor of his father, Nate Holden. But of course, it'd be appropriate based just on Nate's significant contributions to this community in this region. His obit, which ran in the LA Times, was truly inspiring. And he passed it in 95, by the way, so a life very well lived. But I won't impede the progress of the meeting, but I highly recommend that all read the obituary of Nate Holden, a young man who was a gifted engineering and drafting student whose teachers would give him false low grades, because they didn't believe a black man should be in those professions who persisted and became not only a successful professional in that walk of life but then was spurred by those experiences to become an elected official and served at various levels and various capacities for many, many years. And my heart goes out to Chris. I've lost both of my parents, so I know how painful that is as many of us do. So thank you, Mayor. I really appreciate if all of us could adjourn in honor of the late Senator Nate Holden. Absolutely. And I misspoke, Mr. Cole also served with Mr. Holden. And we all, I knew, made and as some of us did, and a real public servant. So Mr. Cole. I would just join my colleagues, and I'm sure I speak for all of us. I also, in addition to serving with Chris Holden, had the opportunity during my time at LA City Hall the first time to serve one of the other council members when he was on the council. He was a tireless, courageous man who definitely marched to the beat of his own drum. And he was fearless when he had a cause in his sights. Absolutely. Great sense of humor too. Okay, so with that we will adjourn and ask our PUSD colleagues to adjourn and also adjourn in memory of Senator Nate council member and Senator Nate Holden. Okay with that we next will move on to our agenda and start with item two and this is the City and School District Partnership, coordinated response and recovery efforts related to the Eden Fire. And let me just on behalf of all and our entire community, think the school board and school district for a terrific partnership in the worst of circumstances and I'll turn it over to our study manager. And our superintendent, Dr. Blanco. So thank you, and let me start by saying that our partnership begins, and it thrives on the idea that we work very hard to be in regular communication on joint issues that affect the community that we both serve. So that includes keeping in touch on extreme weather events. As those events develop, we often discuss with whether or not PUCD schools were closed. For example, we had record rainfall recently. You may remember it was about a year ago, I suppose, but we had more rain than we'd ever seen come down in Pasadena at one time. And there was a question, do you keep the schools open or not? And I was in regular communication with the superintendent, and she, in turn, was in communication with other partners in the school district world. And in that case, we decided not to close the schools or you all decided not to close the schools. And we were there 100% in support of the decisions doing everything we could to facilitate that decision making. A lot of it having to do with our close connection with the National Weather Service. So we get the best updates on weather as part of our fire fighting efforts and other efforts we undertake at the county, amount the city, and we share those as much as we can with the superintendent. Now turning to the wind and the fire events that happened this past January. As the forecast for extreme winds continued to materialize, I recall vividly still Monday, January 6th, 6am the morning over the weekend that contacted the superintendent. And I let her know that we would be meeting that Monday at 6 a.m. to hear a report from the National Weather Service so we could better prepare. She said that she and her team would appreciate and would join that meeting and they did. At that call I also invited the superintendent and her senior team to all of our subsequent EOC meeting calls. EOC is the emergency operations center. During the wind storm and the fires that occurred, we would meet every morning and we meet every afternoon. We'd start with the briefing from weather, we'd start with the briefing from fire, and then we'd move on to reports. And in those reports, the school district would share its challenges and ask for support. And likewise, we would do the same and we would support each other. More specifically on the first night of the fire I must have called the superintendent 10-11 times that night overnight as she kept calling me frankly and asking how about this school is it on fire how about that school and we were trying to give directions to fire to help protect some of our schools because of the important community role they play along with everybody else as well. Once the fire happened, they still recall 22 hours after it happened not even a full day. We put together press conference out in front of the convention center where we had an evacuation center set up. And we wanted to make sure that the superintendent was one of the speakers that spoke as people wondered what about school what's going to happen next so we made sure to include the superintendent in that call or in that press conference and then to communicate a united front the school district a day or two or three later I can't remember that parts jumbled in my mind but we were asked the mayor and myself were asked to attend this press conference at the school district offices and the mayor in fact made comments as well as many of you. Postfire as the district confronted one issue after another, all of my department heads were in direct cell phone communication with the superintendent and her team as they looked to resolve one issue after another. I'm not going to spend the time here to tell you the litany of issues that we confronted jointly. But I can tell you that among the departments that were in regular communication with the superintendent and her staff were police, fire, public health, public works, parks, and so many other of our departments. One of the notable activities we undertook is we have a MASH unit that is located up in the Incanion and their facilities burned. And so we moved them over to the Jefferson campus to continue that work. It's a job-create, a job skills program that helps folks who are looking for skills to get those skills and get better jobs. We had redone some classrooms over at Jefferson and had them there temporarily and then I got a call from the superintendent and we needed some support. You all needed some support to have some pre-K kids there. So we moved Mash again and made room and I think there's either three or four classes there currently and you'll hear about that later on. One last piece I'll speak about is the soil testing. We had been in constant communication with the school district about soil testing. We are trying to coordinate our efforts on soil testing at our parks, at our schools, to get a good sense throughout the community of what we're seeing with respect to contaminants in the soil. And that's a work in progress, thankfully, to date we have received positive test results, but that's an ongoing work stream and one that we've done closely in coordination. So again, these are just a few examples, at least from the city's perspective of things that we did with the school district. And with that, I will now turn it over to my partner here, Superintendent Dr. Blanco. Well, good evening. covered a lot of our efforts together, but I do want to say thank you to everyone here and for all of you who feel comfortable calling me whenever you need something in your community. And I'm thankful for the mayor's relationship with us. And I feel that the district needs to move forward in unity with you as a partner in order to rebuild and restore our communities around us. So that's much appreciated. And as Miguel said, we're going to continue to work together and work with the Health Department to make sure that our students remain safe and that their health and safety is at the forefront of all the decisions we're making. I also want to mention Mr. Line helped us coordinate traffic flow with, you know, bringing arts magnet to the McKinley site and that was, you know, an undertaking and then also with Ellen Dale. So those supports and connecting us to the right people. So the neighbors, you know, felt comfortable with all these new people coming to their neighborhood is really important and we want, you know, to continue to work with our communities that you serve. I know you and our board members are the first ones on the front line hearing from them and when we stand together united I think it makes a difference for the community. Thank you. And with that we're happy to answer any questions. Okay, questions? Mr. Lion. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you and welcome and welcome to welcome. And welcome to Mr. Bravo-Kareemim, Ms. Horvath, and Dr. Kanal, and Dr. Brnozo, and all my colleagues on the board. I just wanted to say it's not so much a question as a comment. We had just been delighted to have kids in Allendale Elementary again. The Alta Dina Arts Magnet community has been such a blessing to our community. And I hear they don't want to leave, which I like. And it is, it just is fantastic to have kids running around in the neighborhood again and all those voices. And so thank you for accelerating the timeline to get them there. And congratulations on being named Superintendent of the year. Thank you. Next I'll call on Miss Kinney and then Mr. Masuda. So this question may be a little off topic, but it has to do with recovery, because I've seen in the new some of your budget stories. And I noticed that I'm assuming partially because of the fire that you're expecting sales tax to go down a little bit. And since we share in sales tax, I wasn't sure if you had been communicating with our business folks about what we might be expecting in the next year. You know, we do have regular quarterly meetings with our sales tax consultant, and they have been given us updates, and you know, we're looking at flat revenues. I'm not sure if that has been communicated and here comes my director of finance, Matthew Hawksworth. Whether that's been communicated to the school district but we certainly can. Mr. Hawksworth, the question is whether we've been in communication about sales tax revenues and the impact it might have on the school district's finances. Good evening, Matt Hawksworth, director of finance. The good news is that our measure eye local sales tax is remained largely robust through the last year. We are certainly starting to feel some of the pressures in the new vehicle in auto sales category, which is if you watch the news that that's a struggling category nationwide. But we also know that because of the fire and the need for people to rebuild and buy things, we're going to get some benefit from some of our local industries in those categories. The other thing is that sales tax is on a three to six month delay in terms of when we actually get revenue information. And that's the hardest part is waiting to find out. But we have guarded optimism. But for the last couple of years, our sales tax has been relatively flat. And that's what we're looking at, at least, for the next year as well, is probably a flat tax base. But that's better than a declining tax base, which you're hearing a lot of other government agencies are challenged with. Mr. Bessuda? Well, thank you both for the report and what happened during the fire. As most of you might know that in my district, we lost the most homes in Pasadena. And so what was on our minds is when the students be able to come back to Pasadena. And that's so important to us. So do you have a plan on working with the students that are not at their homes right now? And do you know how many are your county on coming back? I want to know what my question is. Do you know what your strategy is to have them come back to Pasadena, P-U-S-D. Many of our students have not left. I think at this time their parents are willing or caregivers to drive to Pasadena because they want them to be with their teachers and people they know and friends. We did send out a survey intent to return for next year because we don't know how many people will grow tired of driving really far or not might they might not be able to do that depending on their work. That's been pretty amazing to us. We have lost you know maybe a district-wide, but then another 100 will enroll. So it's been fluctuating back and forth. It has not been the drop that we had expected to see. We've been monitoring it monthly. So we can look and get back to you on how many in your particular area might have disenrolled, and then we can send all of you the latest enrollment report of who's enrolled and who's uniralled. Thank you. I still have our court center for independent study and some of the students have enrolled in if they've moved like out of the state because they plan to come back. I'm not worried about this year. I'm worried about next year. That's what I'm concerned about. I think a lot of us are. We agree with you with that concern. So, you know, like I said, we were quite surprised to see how many people came back and want their children to be with people they know for that comfort. So, you know, we're monitoring closely and probably can get back to you maybe in June. We'll send you an update and now and then an update then. Thank you. Okay. Mr. Hampton, followed by Mr. Lyon. Thank you for all the work that you guys are doing. I'm going to make my comment really quick. One of the things as we talk about the fire response, this in recovery, the recovery is the biggest piece. And I have to say that I have to think, you know, the United States Army Corps of Engineers as fast as they are clearing these lots. It's important. But one thing is financial constraints for families. And one of those barriers to rebuilding is paying for permits. And so I've been on this since day two of the fire and I've been asking city staff to reduce the rates of our permit fees. There's one caveat. There's one piece. And it's a significant piece. And it's the PUSD fee for permit fees. I was wondering if the PUSD school board had looked at for the homes that were lost in the fire. You guys reduce no need to apologize. I just lost my whole train of thought. So I was just wondering as a board looked at or you looked at reducing those fees for the residents as they are going back into rebuild so that we could restitue this community back together. We have not had that conversation, you know, prior to the fire as part of our revenue enhancement, we were exploring raising those fees because they have not been increased for quite some time. So we can definitely have that conversation about what would be the best way forward. Obviously we wanna do it's best for our families. Perfect, thank you. I think raising the fees will probably not be the- No, not at this time. Yeah, not at this time, but yes, if there's a way to reduce them, I appreciate that. Thank you. Okay, Mr. Lion followed by... And followed by Miss Tina Friedrichs. I'll do my best to council member Lion in personation. But when we talk about partnership, we also talk about shared communication. And I think, first of all, I want to say, I'm the newest member of the past being in a five school board. So, it's been a lot since day one. But one of the things that I've admired is from those initial days, the coordination, the excellent coordination of our superintendent's leadership team, really just diving into trying to find some action plan in those first few days of the fire. But one of the things was really communicating building that microsite so that our families could stay connected to the latest information and then, you know, also being forefront in terms of being honest and forefront about safety, student safety. And then as we move through the process, really that coordination piece, and I think one of the things that I've been appreciative of is some coordination and communication with remediation that's happening within the city limits. Some of our school sites that are open are close to locations that are being remediated and that the coordination with the principles of those school sites so that action can be taken so that students are not exposed unnecessarily to debris. And then the last piece is the flux that I think Councilmember Masuda touched on the idea of making sure we retain our families. And I think one of the things that's been important in this is flexibility in terms of enrollment. We've been remarkably flexible in terms of letting families move to different school sites temporarily use our CIS Academy for online learning so that we hopefully we've been able to have continuity and education so that they feel when they're ready to return to those home locations that they're able to do so and I'm proud that we've been able to allow for that. Thank you. Ms. Reddx. Thank you for the presentation. My question is regarding the soil testing. POSD has Pasadena, Altadena, and Sierra Madre. So what is the coordination with the county level health department? I know that there were some surprises of testing along the way. Is there that coordination where there is consistent communication among the cities and the county level? Because to address council member Macyda's concern is number one is safety. And that's what families need to have confidence in. The other thing is kids want to be with their friends. They want to be with their teachers. So that is really like probably the two strongest factor. And I think that we pretty much have a place for all our kids. They want to come back. There's been families that have been displaced to LA, you know, really far away. And they found their way back somehow, back to our schools because they just, you want to be with your friends when you're a little kid, you want to be with your friends. So that, that bond is so strong. But I was, I want to speak to the safety issues moving forward. So I will say that Mr. Bravo, Kareemia, Mr. Carvona, have done an excellent job at making sure that all meetings since there were a couple of miscommunications have all partners at the table that include both health departments, the EPA, the DTSC, and anyone else that has involvement so that we're all hearing the same message and having the same agreements coming out. So I think in the future there won't be any disconnects. Mr. Madison, followed by Ms. Hawley. Thank you, Mayor. Thanks very much to all of our school district representatives, the Board of Administration. And, you know, we, I suppose, a very small silver lining in January 7 was that it really reinforced the importance of coordination and collaboration. And I know that everyone in this room can hold their heads high for that. I do wanna ask about faculty and staff who lost their homes. I know on the city side, we have a number who were affected, including public safety personnel who were fighting the fires as they were losing their own homes. The district have a good handle on how many district faculty employees, staff, were directly affected in that way? We have about 120 employees that lost their homes, but some of them also have multiple family members that lived in the same blocks or the same vicinity of them even though they're not employees. And then close to a thousand students have lost their homes. Our heart goes out to them and I think it really is incumbent on us to do our level best in the entire recovery. And I know our city is committed to that. Our planning staff is well-equipped and extremely capable to process applications for those limited number of sites that are in Pasadena, regrettably as Board Member Frederick's indicated. Most of the damage was in the county jurisdiction, and I can't vouch for that. I just, you know, I think that's a different story. But anything we can do to help with those, both the children and families, but also your own team, you know, the faculty, staff, administration, please let us know how we can support them. And I, you know, I am really concerned about the children because I think they experienced that trauma in a very different and maybe more profound way than adults do. So again, all our best in handling that additional challenge of your mission. Thank you. One thing all of you can do, I know you do have relationships with senators and assembly people and we really need them to understand that we need hold harmless for more than one year. This is a long term impact on the school district and it was very difficult for us to have to go through the processes we went through with layoffs. Nobody wanted to do that. We were resolving a problem that was prefire, right? And they're going to help us with postfire for this year. And for next year, a hold harmless if the governor's budget passes. But just to let them know the importance of having this hold harmless on our average daily attendance for more than one year would be very helpful. So with the mayor and my colleagues permission I'm the chair of the LEG policy committee so let's communicate offline about how we can help with specific legislative initiatives to people to support you. I think it would be helpful for the entire council to know so maybe formally send the council a request that we'll handle the legislative policy. Yes, we can send you the letters and backup materials that we have sent them. Yeah, great. Thank you. Okay. Yeah, and Mr. Hampton, did you have a suggestion on it? I was just suggesting that if this is something that the USD needs and we need because whatever the USD needs, the city needs as well, that we should just sign a joint letter and maybe that could be a motion from Councilmember Madison tonight that we figure out the verbiage and what not. And we just do that today while we're all here. Well, I appreciate that sentiment. I would say we're having a ledge policy in a couple of weeks. I would much rather get that details of it and then come back to the council with that. It sounds like the district's already vigorously pursuing that. So if you're okay with that, but again, I really appreciate that. Yeah, I think sending it to us and also to Sierra Madri and asking for their support and to the board of supervisors as well as well. Thank you. Sorry about that, I'm just a agnount, I've got. I'm gonna surprise you guys. President Holley. Thank you for the presentation. I appreciate it. I just wanted to say that talking about the enrollment issue for next year, which I've heard a lot of people are worried about it. And I am too. So the rebuild in Al-Tedin, I have such faith in my colleagues and community members there so focused on Al-Tedin, but to support and really help them out on their rebuild will help our enrollment. Once people can get back into their homes and I do have faith that they will want to be in PUSD because no other district in Southern California is offering what we're offering with our all-star musical and the dual in language and our new storytelling academy that's gonna be opening. So we have so much to offer and we do want to retain our children, but they absolutely have to have their houses. So thank you. Thank you, Mr. Jones. Thanks, Marin. First, thank you for your service, Dr. Golanco and Miguel on your coordination. I think it was very helpful for our residents that we represent. I have two questions. One is related to enrollment. So I understand this year it seems like there's a there's a way or a strength to come back to the schools no matter how far the student their families are living away from past dinner out to dinner. However, have you identified any transportation barriers for next year? And are you kind of like mapping it out or grouping together where certain families are and maybe providing carpool or vanpool so they can get to their school if they decide to return to PUSD next year? We haven't done that yet with the exception of students with IEPs who have transportation in their IEPs and I think we've gone pretty far out to make sure they can come to school and you know the students are falling under the Ventoma Kenny Act right and they do receive some services for families and transition. It's not that we have a great resource in that area but you know that is something that we should look at if they if they need that kind of support. And we're really pleasantly surprised that either was not any request for transportation for El Tadeena Arts Magnet you know to go to Ellendale so we so we thought maybe people were gonna say I can't get there, but... So I think parents have helped each other out, and we should create that network for them too. That's beautiful. And the second question relates to around the trauma. So what opportunities has the district created for students to process and reflect on the Eden Fire, whether that's through counseling or classroom discussions or creative expression. And I bring that up because my cousin attends Ph.S. and he says oftentimes there's a lot of conversation going on between the students about the Eden Fire and whether or not their home burned down or how they were impacted. And then we were at the Marin Eye, we were at PHS football's banquet and talking to some of those athletes. They're same thing, right? How they were impacted. So I'm just wondering what the district, what type of opportunities is the district providing for students to express their, to express their, or to reflect on the impact of the infire. So our return to school, we did spend a day training all of our staff members, teachers in particular, how to respond to the students in circles. We've had a strong social emotional curriculum for some time, but our teachers have told us they would like more training in that area. And so our launch of the school year is going to be completely focused on wellness type of training. We had a lot of support from other school districts and the county when everything happened, but all of the people that were helping us, they do have regular jobs as well. So they had to return to them. Dr. Renoso is here and she was sharing with me this afternoon about some additional grants that we're going out for. State grants and then also there is a federal grant, the federal government came to visit Al-Tedina Arts Magnet and that particular office is help school, just school, just school, just school, just school.