By Gus Herrera
Last week the Pasadena City Council held a special joint meeting with the Pasadena Unified School District (PUSD) in order to update the council on several ongoing and recently completed projects. Three major topics of concern included Collaborate PASadena, the Youth Master Plan, and the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the Pasadena Police Department (PPD) and the city’s schools.
Before the meeting could proceed to the aforementioned matters, there were some formalities to take care of. After roll call and the Pledge of Allegiance, Mayor Tornek took the time to thank last year’s Rose Court for their service to the community. 2016 Rose Queen Erika Winter gave a brief speech and then each member of the court received a special certificate of recognition from the mayor himself. It was a nice gesture as the mayor turned the page from last year, appropriately highlighting some of the area’s brightest products on a night when the council asked the PUSD give an update on how Pasadena will look to improve conditions for its youth in the future.
Collaborate PASadena was adopted unanimously on Feb. 19, 2013, during a similar joint meeting between the city council and PUSD. Originally known as the School/City/Community Work Plan, Collaborate PASadena is a multi-jurisdictional effort led by “youth, non-profits, higher education, businesses, and parents, in partnerships with the Town of Altadena, City of Sierra Madre, City of Pasadena and the PUSD” to provide a “new way of doing business across multiple sectors to ensure desired outcomes for all children,” according to the city’s staff report.
Lila Guirguis, lead consultant, and Brian Biery, community engagement consultant presented Collaborate PASadena’s progress to the council. In 2015 they held three community wide meetings and established a “Backbone Team” to develop and eventually implement the core functions and roles they hope to carry out. They have also agreed on a shared indicator of success for children, third grade reading scores: “reading proficiency at the end of third grade is predictive of whether or not a student will graduate from high school … third grade marks the transition from ‘learning to read’ to ‘reading to learn.’ Students with limited reading have a harder time keeping up across multiple subjects … and those who fall behind in the early grades often stay behind.” According to their research, only 35 percent of third graders in the PUSD are reading at a proficient level.
The Collaborate PASadena representatives also presented the council with a brochure they designed to help improve communication with their stakeholders. Unfortunately these brochures contained errors within some of the graphs, a mistake pointed out by the ever-vigilant Councilmember Kennedy. Collaborate PASadena is very much in its early stages at this point, for more information visit www.CollaboratePASadena.org.
The following item on the meeting’s agenda was an update on the Youth Master Plan. In 2013 it was agreed that there would be a youth survey to “help develop effective planning for the youth and to address protective and risk factors and identify gaps in service,” according to the supplemental material submitted during the meeting. Students from Pasadena, Altadena, Sierra Madre, and parts of La Canada Flintridge (between the ages of 11 and 18) took the survey. The results produced six priority areas that local youth desire access to: healthy foods; better public transportation; bully, drug, and alcohol-free environments; a youth support system; and an education system that helps students be “life ready.” In the coming year the Youth Master Plan Council hopes to work with the city, PUSD, and efforts like Collaborate PASadena to help provide the nurturing environment Pasadena’s youth deserve.
For the next item on the agenda, Pasadena Police Chief Sanchez presented an update on the MOU between PPD and PUSD. Instituted in 2006, the MOU was originally meant to establish operational guidelines between PPD and high school campuses only. In 2008 the MOU was extended to middle school campuses and in 2013 it was reaffirmed due to its success. Since then, the relationship between the police and Pasadena’s schools have, “empowered teachers and principals to handle discipline issues at the lowest level … officers will not respond to calls of discipline problems involving students,” according to Sanchez’ report. By leaving discipline in the hands of the educational institutions, the police officers on campus may act as counselors, hopefully building relationships with students, instead of alienating them by means of their authority. Sanchez reported to the council that of the 246 total calls for service from 2014 to 2015 only 16 led to arrests, while 92 led to counseling, and 96 led to administrative actions by PUSD, as opposed to criminal actions. His report also claims that student attendance, district-wide, has increased.
The meeting concluded with some updates on ongoing and recently completed construction projects at McKinley School, Washington Middle School, and John Muir High School.
For more details on last week’s meeting between the Pasadena City Council and PUSD visit http://ww2.cityofpasadena.net/councilagendas/council_agenda.asp.
