Reopening Loma Alta Elementary Discussed at PUSD Meeting Thursday

Pasadena Unified School District officials got questions at a Thursday night meeting about reopening Loma Alta Elementary to compensate for the , according to Adam Wolfson, the district's communications director.

San Rafael is slated to be closed as soon as the 2013-14 school year because of the discovery of new fault lines that run under the school, according to a district press release.  Under state law, the school cannot modernize any buildings within 50 feet of an active fault line, so the district is looking at a range of options for a new school or eventually moving kids in the San Rafael attendance boundary to new neighborhood schools.

At a meeting Thursday, community members were invited to discuss possible solutions to what to do with the extra kids once the school is shut down.

Patch was not at the meeting, but according to Wolfson, there were between 150 and 200 people there, and most of them appeared to be San Rafael parents.

Loma Alta Elementary, which was located on North Cannon Boulevard, just north of Loma Alta Boulevard, was closed down at the end of the 2010-11 school year following a process to determine which schools to close because of declining enrollment and financial issues.  San Rafael received significant votes from the committee tasked with suggesting schools, but Burbank and Loma Alta were ultimately selected as the ones to be shut down.

Wolfson said the district is open to all ideas, including reopening Loma Alta. Issues with that plan would include that the district has already allowed several programs, , to use the campus.  Additionally, Loma Alta is far away from much of the district's students, which was the main reason it was closed in the first place.

Nobody at Thursday's meeting suggested the possibility of reopening Burbank, according to Wolfson.

PUSD's official recommendations for how to deal with San Rafael's closure are:

• Closing the campus and relocate students/programs to other campuses. The move would cost $150,000 but the district would then also have $5.3 million in Measure TT funds earmarked for San Rafael to spend on other schools.
• Relocate to Allendale Elementary campus, which would leave the district with a $1.1 million Measure TT surplus after spending $4.2 million on modernizing the Allendale campus.  
• Reopen the Linda Vista Elementary school campus, which would cost more than $12 million, leaving the district with a net $4.77 million loss.
• The service center option in Altadena, which would cost $18.9 million and leave the district with a $9.2 million funding shortfall.
• Build a new school at the San Rafael site on a portion of campus not affected by geological hazards.  This would leave the district with a funding shortfall of more than $10 million.