When Altadena’s Eliot Arts Magnet Academy burned in the Eaton fire, its theater program’s substantial collection of largely handmade costumes was destroyed. Last week, however, the middle school took a small but meaningful step toward recovery.
The Pasadena Educational Foundation awarded drama teacher Mollie Lief and a colleague a $2,000 grant to fund the purchase of costumes for the school’s upcoming musical production.
“Every single dollar that goes to the Eliot Arts drama and dance programs just means that we can keep doing what we do for the kids,” Lief said.
And yet, she said, “Under the surface there is so much pain, and there’s trauma.”
Eliot was among five public or charter schools that burned down or were badly damaged nearly a year ago. Three charter campuses were housed on Pasadena Unified property. One campus, which housed a previously closed school, also burned. In all, dozens of campuses were forced into extended closures after the fire began Jan. 7.
Although the schooling has long since continued, the healing has been fraught.
For students, teachers and administrators, the issues have ranged from the logistical to the emotional. About 1,100 students lost homes. Pasadena Unified enrollment plunged by about 500 students this academic year as families relocated.
Exacerbating the toll, the district has been grappling in recent years with financial turmoil — and 2025 forced a painful reckoning amid the fire recovery. After years of declining enrollment and the exhaustion of pandemic-era federal funds, Pasadena Unified had run up a $37-million budget deficit even before the fire.
Following the February approval of a plan to slash $12 million from the district’s 2025-26 school year, the school board voted in late November to cut another $24.5 million from next year’s budget through layoffs and other austerity measures. The district has shuttered five schools since 2019, and last week it resolved to explore the possibility of more closures.
District enrollment is now fewer than 14,000 — a steep decline from 20 years ago when about 21,000 students attended. Over the years the district has lost students to charters and private schools, three of which burned.
For Pasadena Unified, the economic toll of the Eaton fire — which killed 19 people and destroyed more than 9,000 structures — remains unknown in part because it has yet to receive a large portion of expected insurance proceeds. The district also sued Southern California Edison as it seeks compensation for fire-related losses.
“There’s cycles of grieving going on for both the fire and for the budget situation,” Pasadena Unified Supt. Elizabeth J. Blanco said. “We just need to continue to support one another, hold each other up and make sure that we’re aware of where people are emotionally, and provide them the support to be successful — whether they’re adults or students.”
How Pasadena Unified students cope
About 200 Pasadena Unified teachers and staff gathered this month to receive awards from the Pasadena Educational Foundation, which received more donations than usual and was able to give more than $320,000 to local teachers.
Among the recipients were educators from Pasadena Unified’s John Muir High School, which was spared from flames but whose staff and students were deeply affected by the conflagration. About 175 Muir students and 18 staff members lost their homes, and hundreds more students were temporarily displaced.
Muir’s technical theater teacher Courtney Scrabeck — who lost her Altadena home — and a colleague received a $2,500 grant for an art project to help students reflect on their inner, fire-related grief.
In the weeks after Muir reopened, Scrabeck brought out art supplies and encouraged students to draw, sew or simply make something small — like a Valentine’s Day card. The teacher said providing a creative outlet made it easier for some to begin broaching painful topics.
“Because they were doing this, they were able to talk about their feelings,” said Scrabeck, who helps run the school’s design lab and will use the funds for ultraviolet paint and other art supplies.
Many displaced students who wanted to stay at Muir have moved far from campus. They are often late to class, Scrabeck said. One of her students commutes from Monrovia and does not own a car. Others moved to the San Fernando Valley. Scrabeck said she’s made agreements with students with long commutes and doesn’t penalize them for tardiness.
She said she feels a special kinship with pupils who, like her, lost their homes: “They also know that we are safe spaces to talk if they need to.”
As for Eliot, rebuilding the school known for its imposing bell tower will be a years-long project. With the Lake Avenue property obliterated, it now operates out of Pasadena’s McKinley School. Hallways are crowded and loud, especially during passing periods. Eliot’s school library operates out of a supply closet. Since both schools plan to produce a spring musical, teachers have needed to negotiate rehearsal schedules.
Amid these challenges, the prospect of job cuts and other cost-saving measures has unsettled teachers across the district. Preliminary layoff notices will be issued early next year.
Jonathan Gardner, the Pasadena teachers union president, said “the student experience and student learning experience needs to be prioritized and needs to be stabilized,” and took issue with some of the potential cuts that could be made next year.
“They have the funding to do it — to focus on” students, he said. “There are alternate cuts that they can make that would allow for that.”
Lief, who received a pink slip in February — it later was rescinded — said “it would be impossible not to worry about” the possibility of layoffs.
It’s fitting, she said, that her class will put on a production of “Bring it On: The Musical” this spring. The show explores teamwork in competitive cheerleading.
“It’s all about unity and coming together, and so it felt like the right next show for Eliot,” Lief said.
Charter schools struggle
Three charter schools that were badly damaged or destroyed have dealt with their own struggles. Each had rented space at vacant Pasadena Unified campuses and was forced to move to new venues. For some, waves of student withdrawals followed.
At Aveson Global Leadership Academy, enrollment dropped from 200 to 165 at the middle and high schools, mostly because it discontinued a prep sports program at the end of the 2024-25 year for reasons unrelated to the fire, executive director Aaron Gerwer said. Even though Aveson’s location at the campus of a former private school survived largely intact, leadership still decided to relocate.
“We talked about going back to our old campus, but there had been a lot of smoke damage and the community around [it] had all kind of burned down — so it was painful to go back there,” Gerwer said.
Enrollment at Odyssey Charter Schools’ two campuses — which included elementary and middle-school grades — had been growing before the fire. The inferno all but destroyed one campus, which has relocated, and the other sustained smoke damage and later reopened.
This year combined enrollment dropped from 835 to 496. At least 83 families lost their homes and others were displaced by smoke damage.
“Our goal is to rebuild back to where we were — to continue to be a school that focuses on the social and emotional well-being of students,” said Sylvia Corona, Odyssey’s director of education.
A similar scenario played out at Aveson, which ran an elementary program — Aveson School of Leaders — at a former Pasadena Unified school site in Altadena, and Aveson Global on another property. The elementary school burned to the ground.
Parent Amber Sealey said the lost elementary campus had “a huge garden with vegetables and chickens.” It was a place “where kids are taught to get along with others, how to be themselves … and be a part of the community.”
Aveson School of Leaders did not find a new location for more than a month and lost 40% to 50% of its enrollment, said Gerwer, the Aveson Global executive director.
Among those who left is Sealey’s son. Their family remains out of their house amid smoke damage repairs. They are living in Los Angeles and finishing the year at an L.A. Unified school. The teachers are good, but the vibe there is comparatively bureaucratic and conformist, Sealey said.
Aveson Global reopened in January, moving into additional space in what used to be Pasadena’s Wilson Middle School, which it already had been using alongside other programs operated by the district. The school had to squeeze into tight quarters. Private schools donated furniture. Parents erected partitions in classrooms. And Gerwer’s office became a desk in the hall.
“The community is more than a building,” he said, “and one thing that we’ve come away from this is seeing just how strong our community actually is, and that’s been a beautiful thing.”
But the school’s decreased enrollment is a major problem. Gerwer said Aveson Global needs to bring in more than 200 students. “If we don’t, it becomes difficult to continue to run our programming in the way that we’d like,” he said.
On a recent weekday at Aveson Global, students sat in a circle with an array of drums in front of them. They were taking part in a program called Beat the Odds, brought to the school by the Arts & Healing Initiative through a $50,000 fire-aid grant. The drum thumps were meant to evoke their emotions.
Outside of the class exercise, several participants talked about how they were doing. One student said he had survivor’s guilt after the blaze. Others didn’t want to talk about their trauma at all.
“This program is honestly God-sent,” senior Henry Blood said. “Anything that gets kids … playing music together is just incredible, especially after the fire. Just talking about your feelings and expressing yourself — a lot of these kids, I’m sure, just feel a whole lot more secure from that.”
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