California leaders need to keep their promises to the schools affected by LA fires

After so much unspeakable loss due to January’s Eaton Fire, a new kind of loss has rocked our school district in Los Angeles County and threatens to undo much of the progress that has been made towards rebuilding and restoring our school community.

Recently, Pasadena Unified School District issued layoff notices to more than 100 teachers — many of whom lost their homes in the fire. Laying teachers off during normal times is troubling. Two months after the Eaton Fire, it is utterly unconscionable. 

In the days after the fire struck, I witnessed my colleague Sergio Lopez, an Altadena native and second-year math teacher, show up at a donation center with tears in his eyes to help me and other John Muir High School colleagues distribute goods in the wake of the disaster. It was a hazy Friday morning with heavy smoke still lingering in the air. Two days earlier, Sergio lost his house, the multigenerational family home that he grew up in.

Now, two months later, this same remarkable young math teacher has tears in his eyes again as he joins the 115 teachers in Pasadena Unified School District who received layoff notices earlier this month. His house is gone, his town has been decimated and the very school district that he attended as a student and now serves as a teacher has signaled to him that it will no longer be his professional home.

When State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond visited our school district at an all-staff reopening event in late January, he gave a rousing speech pledging the state’s full support to our community. Included in his remarks was a particular phrase that stood out to many of us: “held harmless.”

Thurmond was referencing the state’s commitment to not penalize our district for the impact that the Eaton Fire may have on our total number of instructional days, our student attendance levels or our enrollment numbers as we contend with the unforeseen displacement that many hundreds of students and staff have had to endure. Thurmond did not mean that our district would be held harmless from its ongoing budget dilemma, a trend that plagues many school districts as they face declining enrollment and the loss of COVID relief funding. 

Held harmless. Those curious words seem meager now. What Sergio and the other 114 staff members who received layoff notices are feeling right now is great harm. Inconceivable harm. And our school community desperately needs the state’s help.

The aftermath of the fire saw teachers, counselors, clerks and school staff of all varieties jump into action to locate displaced students, volunteer at collection sites and orchestrate a return to school so that students could be back with their classmates and begin the hard work of processing loss while continuing their education. At a time when safety and stability is so needed, these very teachers who have dedicated their lives to serving our students have seen their careers upended. A district that is still reeling from the fires — still working to address the immeasurable trauma that so many of our students and staff have experienced — is in no condition to bear yet another loss. 

We need help.

Others can debate who is to blame for our district’s budget crisis. What I want to see is local, state and county leaders stepping in and helping. I am hopeful that our political leaders who have pledged so much public support for our area can find a way to secure emergency funding that will halt these layoffs and provide relief to keep our schools fully staffed as we continue to rebuild and restore our learning community into next year.

These 115 teachers and their students need a reprieve. They need to be held harmless.