The El Monte Union High School District is scrapping $1.1 million in design work on a new campus for adult students with disabilities, deciding instead to rent the proposed site to a board member’s employer.
Pasadena City College has used the property owned by El Monte Union for its Rosemead satellite campus since 2013, but the high school district previously announced it would let that lease expire this summer so it could begin construction on a permanent space for its Adult Transition Program, which serves about 100 students with disabilities who have aged out of the high school’s special education program.
In 2021, after a year of internal discussions, El Monte Union’s Board of Trustees voted to relocate the students — ranging in age from 18 to 22 — from deteriorating trailers in a parking lot to the Rosemead Boulevard property used by PCC. The board, which at that time included four of the five members currently in office, extended PCC’s lease to July 2023 as a courtesy and warned the community college there would not be an extension.
Now, just four months before the start of construction, three board members — Ricardo Padilla, Esthela Torres de Siegrist and Qui Nguyen — have reversed course and instead directed the district’s administration to reintegrate the Adult Transition Program students back into their high schools. The three board members fired the architects working on Rosemead project and then, in closed session, directed staff to reopen negotiations with Pasadena City College.
Both decisions received a majority only because of Torres de Siegrist, who works as an adjunct professor at PCC.
The district spent $1.1 million from the $190 million Measure HS bond on the designs for the Rosemead property and has another $200,000 to $300,000 in outstanding bills, according to a presentation at the board’s Jan. 18 meeting. The district has faced criticism in the past for lax oversight of bond monies.
Meeting turns chaotic
Board…
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