Pasadena School Board Meeting 10/11/18

The school board meeting last Thursday was packed with students, teachers and administrators coming to make public comments about a possible consolidation plan for PUSD.

Each person got two minutes to voice their opinions. Two minutes of talk from seemingly random people may sound uninteresting for some, but when we consider that democracy is maintained by participating in public spaces one can see public comment from an interesting perspective.

Being able to speak freely in public is a component of democracy. Doing this in concert with one another is a force of nature.

One of the topics at this meeting was the plan to consolidate and possibly close schools within PUSD.

One of those schools is in Altadena and this is a contentious subject as Altadena has already had five public schools closed leaving us with five public schools still in operation.

We also have four charter schools and one private school within our boundaries.

Public schools and school board meetings are public spaces where we act as a public.

Can we maintain democratic values if we have a shrinking public sphere? I don’t think so.

Here's a short clip of our co-blogger, LeighAnn, on the live feed! We’ll post her entire statement this week.

(Video courtesy Pasadena Unified School District)

-JHL



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