Opinion

PUSD statement on budget outlook

By Board of Education President Scott Phelps and Superintendent Brian McDonald, Ed.D.

In what has been one of the most challenging years for our country, the teachers, staff and administrators of Pasadena Unified School District (PUSD) demonstrated their unflagging commitment to our students and their families. savings account, in case we need to dip into it to cover unexpected costs in textbooks, materials, and facilities. The state requires school districts to maintain a minimum amount in the reserve fund.

As the COVID-19 pandemic diminishes, we are planning and budgeting for the 2021-2022 school year with the expectation that PUSD will fully reopen our schools for in-person learning. As we move forward with our budgeting for the future, our goals are twofold: to develop our budget strategically to meet the needs of our students and to make the budget development process transparent and accessible to our constituents.

To make PUSD more competitive with other districts when it comes to salaries and benefits, we are committed to improving employee compensation so that we can retain and recruit the remarkable and innovative educators and employees that make such a difference in our students’ lives. We know that accomplishing this will take some strategic prioritizing — and hard choices in the near future.

Like many districts around us, PUSD cannot increase salaries in the 2020-2021 school year. However, with the state proposing to provide the cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) for schools in 2021-2022, PUSD has offered our labor partners a onetime bonus for employees in the current year, which can then be placed on the salary schedule as an ongoing raise once the state COLA is funded in the 2021-2022 school year that begins on July 1.

Every year, PUSD creates a budget based on how much money we expect the district to receive in state and federal funding. We track revenue and expenses to ensure the district maintains a balanced budget. Nearly 85% of PUSD’s budget is invested in teachers, administrators, and classified staff who work hard to provide excellent educational opportunities for our students.

Our largest cost increases every year come from built-in salary increases (which occur with added years of service and completion of increased education and professional development), mandatory rising district contributions to state pensions, and rising health care costs for employees. PUSD maintains a general fund reserve, much like a To keep up with inflation and these increasing costs, PUSD needs a revenue increase of at least 5% every year if our enrollment remains stable. Therefore, in most years, the state of California provides an increase in ongoing revenue called the COLA. This leads to improved compensation for our hardworking employees (although with enrollment declines, we would need additional funds or budget reductions to cover the loss of revenue associated with losing students). However, last June, because of the pandemic’s effect on the economy and tax revenues, the state of California did not provide a COLA to school districts for the 2020-2021 school year. The COLA was zeroed out for 2020-2021. PUSD has received state and federal COVID-19 relief funds to help mitigate the substantial costs of transitioning to remote learning and making classrooms safe for students and staff to return to campus. These one-time funds are restricted, which means that they must be spent on extending learning time, mental health services and supports, and facilities upgrades such as hospital-grade air purifiers and air conditioner filter upgrades as well as inspection and repair of all air conditioning units. Funds must be spent by Sept. 30, 2024, at the latest. As one-time funds, these dollars cannot be used for salary increases since salary raises are ongoing and must have an ongoing source of funds. We are moving forward with a strategic budgeting approach that commits and allocates our resources to meet our district’s goals, examines the results of programs and initiatives we have invested in, and makes adjustments to optimize our students’ educational experiences. During the pandemic, PUSD teachers, administrators, and classified employees never stopped working to make our schools better and safer for our students. They had to master new technologies and adjust to ever-changing conditions. We are profoundly grateful for their hard work for the students and families of our district..

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My Tribe Rise: Bringing peace to Altadena

By Matthew Rodriguez Pasadena Weekly Deputy Editor

Building bridges, breaking bread and spreading peace. Those are the goals of Heavenly Hughes and Victor Hodgeson of My Tribe Rise.

“We understand that the ministry of breaking bread is a way of connecting with one another,” Hughes said. “Breaking bread brings a sense of peace and connection, even with tribe members.”

Hughes and Hodgeson created their grassroots activism organization, My Tribe Rise, in 2019 with the broad goal of creating peace in their neighborhood, targeting the warring gangs, the Bloods and the Cripps. Instead of using the term “gang members,” the couple prefers to use the term “tribe members.”

“If you identify someone as a gang member that automatically puts a stigma on the individual — a very bad, negative stigma,” said Hodgeson.

“If you look up ‘tribe’ in the dictionary, it’s a group of individuals that have similar interests. We want to replace the name ‘gang member’ and call them a ‘tribe member’ because tribe members have changed and they are doing more positive things.”

Their experiences with the gangs in Altadena prepared them to be advocates for peace in their neighborhood and the Greater Los Angeles area.

“The thing that stood out to me was their genuine love for that group of people,” said Minister Tony Muhammed from the Nation of Islam and a gang-intervention activist. “You have to have an extraordinary amount of love of gang members who have gone wrong and want to be criminals.”

In the lifestyle

At the age of 10, searching for a place to belong, Hodgeson joined the Altadena Blocc Cripps.

“It was a like a complete freedom by joining them,” said Hodgeson. “It’s like a fraternity [or] a brotherhood. We don’t look at each other as gang members. We look at each other as a family.”

While Hodgeson felt free as a member of Altadena Blocc Cripps, his entire family, especially his mother, grew more and more stressed the longer he was in the gang.

“It puts stress on the whole entire family,” said Hodgeson. “A mother will always be worried about their child being in that lifestyle. It put a lot of stress on her worrying about me.”

In 1986, the life of being a gang member caught up with Hodgeson when he was found guilty of possession of a firearm. As a teenager, he was sent to California Youth Authority for three years. The survival-of-the-fittest type environment forced him to reconsider his lifestyle.

“It taught me to respect the next man,” said Hodgeson. “It also made me want to do something different in life. Sitting in jail, you have a lot of time to think. One of the things I thought of is there has to be a better way to live. This cannot be it.”

While in CYA, Hodgeson began to turn his life around, earning his GED. After

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