Eliot Arts Magnet, other displaced PUSD schools, remain without permanent home

Even more than one year after her Eliot Arts Magnet classroom was destroyed in the Eaton fire, Mary Herrera nearly daily goes through a mini-emotional rollercoaster.

She’ll remember a folder filled with letters that her students have written her in her 20 years of teaching. And then she realizes she left that at Eliot.

“Every day, you still notice new things that you have lost or didn’t know you had left at work,” Herrera said.

Her place of work for the last three years was consumed by the catastrophic blaze.

Since Jan. 7, 2025, Eliot has been housed at McKinley School in Pasadena and will be for the foreseeable future. Eliot and the handful of other campuses relocated due to the fire remain displaced from their home sites.

As the one-year anniversary of the Eaton fire passed this week, with it came the realization of settling in to temporary campuses for the longer haul.

Herrera said she and her colleagues have experienced the last year in stages of acceptance. The first four months teachers grappled with the reality that their school and all their stuff was gone. The following few months the realization that this would be her classroom for awhile, but still a hesitance to fully settle in.

“Honestly, in the last month it has felt like a whole new realization that this is where we’re going to be,” Herrera said. “I’m going to teach here at this school for the next, what, five years at a minimum.”

Eliot teachers described their students as being crammed into a small number of classrooms and separate from the McKinley campus. Teachers shared the frustration over a lack of support from the Pasadena Unified School District when their new McKinley home is across the street from the PUSD central office.

Teachers said they’ve relied on community donations and Amazon wish lists to fill in the supply gap left by what some feel is a lack of district support.

“I don’t know how they can treat people who have had everything taken from them like that,” Herrera said.

Eliot teachers and staff have been waiting months to use portable rooms being installed at McKinley. The promises of when they would be usable started in the months following the fire and continue today and they are not ready.

McKinley officials could not be reached for comment.

PUSD officials did not respond with an estimated time when teachers could move in. They did confirm that all schools that were displaced by the fire have not returned to their original campuses.

The district suffered damage or complete loss to five of its nine elementary and middle schools, all in Altadena. Eliot moved to McKinley, Aveson School of Leaders moved from its Noyes Elementary School campus to the Cleveland campus, Odyssey Charter South moved from the Edison Campus to the Arts Center and Rosebud Academy moved from Loma Alta Elementary School to Don Benito.

Mandi Holmes, a parent at Aveson, said students continue to be using combined classrooms at their relocated site.

“We have no idea what is happening with our campus or any plans PUSD has for us, if any,” Holmes said in an email.

During its debris removal operation, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers prioritized PUSD campuses and removed more than 174 tons of debris from campuses. Eliot represented one of the final debris removal projects the Corps of Engineers completed in Altadena.

While those campuses were destroyed in the fire, Altadena Arts Magnet did not suffer fire damage, but its students have been relocated to Allendale due to Altadena Arts’ proximity to the destroyed properties.

It was a year of upheaval for PUSD students at school and at home. According to the district, nearly 75% of PUSD’s 14,000 students evacuated during the fire and almost half of the district’s employees.

In addition, more than 980 families and 120 employees lost their homes in the fire.

District spokesperson Hilda Ramirez Horvath said the Board of Education adopted a resolution to rebuild Eliot and that the other impacted campuses will be part of the Superintendent’s Facilities Advisory Committee, which launches this year.

According to the district, the committee will provide, “coordinated, transparent and strategic oversight of the district’s long-range facilities planning and bond programs.”

“The Eaton Fire destroyed or significantly damaged five of our district sites, and it is vital that we align our bond and facilities planning to this new reality,” Superintendent Elizabeth Blanco said in a statement. “This council ensures that every decision we make moving forward is transparent, data-driven, fiscally responsible, and aligned with our mission and community values.”

Herrera lost her home in the fire along with about a third of her students a handful of her Eliot colleagues

Despite the relocation and subsequent hurdles of the past year Herrera said Eliot students have continued to push forward and stayed positive throughout.

“I think we’re building a really special place and it would be so nice if the district let us know that they thought we were special, too,” Herrera said.

In addition to being a PUSD teacher on and off for about 15 years, Herrera is also a PUSD parent. Her daughter attends Altadena Arts Magnet, whose campus survived the fire but whose students have been relocated to the vacant Allendale campus due to the need for smoke remediation at Altadena Arts.

Herrera said Altadena Arts students have limited a play area space and lack basic playground equipment like a swing set or monkey bars.

“Loma Alta Park, they rebuilt their whole park and had a grand opening,” Herrera said. “People are there as we speak playing on it right now, and this district could not get a swing set put in?”