The Brief

Hugs, high-fives and handmade signs welcomed students and their families back to Pasadena's Don Benito Elementary School on Wednesday.

“You feel the love,” said parent Ravea Miller. “It's always been love. But you just feel it more [today] because everybody was affected.”

The majority of Pasadena schools that shut down during the peak of the Eaton Fire have now reopened. Pasadena Unified staggered reopenings over two weeks, and the final nine campuses welcomed students back Thursday.

Unanswered questions remain about rebuilding, how to make up for three weeks of lost in-person schooling and how the fallout from the fires could exacerbate existing financial challenges.

There’s also relief.

“We're just excited, ready to get back and get the kids back into school, and get them back into the groove again, and make things go back halfway normal,” said Gilbert Moore as he walked his kids into Washington Elementary STEM Magnet School on Monday morning.

Taking stock of feelings

Some students grappled with mixed emotions.

“I'm happy that I didn't get affected by the fires, but I'm sad because other people got affected by the fires,” said fifth-grader Jezzebelle Hernandez.

The district estimates that more than two-thirds of its 14,000 students and 1,387 employees live in evacuation zones.

“We don't know if they're going to come in smiling or they're going to come in crying,” said Cherise Holmes, a wellness coach at Washington.

Dulce Bernabe said her second-grade daughter was worried about her school and her friends during the closures.

“Creo que les sirve mucho estar aquí,” Bernabe said as she walked out of the school. She thinks its helpful for the students to be in class because it shows them that this is their reality. "Tenemos que seguir viviendo con lo que haya pasado.” We have to continue living with what's happened, she said.

A ‘warm and inviting’ return to school

According to district data, an average of 82% of students showed up on the first day of class at the first 11 schools to reopen, and at most schools, attendance has increased in subsequent days.

Don Benito first-grade teacher Amethyst Juknavorian invited her students to wear their pajamas and bring their favorite stuffed animal to the first day of class in more than two weeks.

“We never start like that; we always start with our instruction,” Juknavorian said. “But, for this week, I want it to be just more warm and inviting.”

Don Benito Elementary School first-grade teacher Amethyst Juknavorian, right, welcomes students with a pajama day on Wednesday.

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The students sat in a circle with their stuffed animals in their laps and one by one (and sometimes all at once) shared their feelings and experiences.

They ranged from fear to boredom. A boy in blue plaid pajama bottoms recounted how a tree fell in his apartment courtyard and he saw a dead squirrel — which prompted his peers to shout out dead animals that they’ve seen.

“That does happen,” Juknavorian said.

Abel Hernandez wore a navy blue onesie with a candy cane pattern and held a fuzzy plush longhorn cow. He said he felt sad and nervous.

“The wildfire almost hit my house,” Hernandez said.

LAist spoke with two education researchers who said it’s not the lost time in the classroom that has the greatest potential to negatively affect students, but the stress and trauma of being evacuated, losing a home, or witnessing others in the community go through those experiences.

 ”It's important for educators to provide opportunities for young people to read, talk about [and] make sense of their experiences during the fires,” said UCLA education professor John Rogers. “Because we want young people to come away from this really difficult time feeling a sense of their personal power, as well as how they're connected to others who care about them and about their future.”

USC education, psychology and neuroscience professor Mary Helen Immordino-Yang said young children process disturbing, distressing and frightening experiences throughout a lifetime.

“They are woven into the story of how the world can work and how the world does work and what it means to be safe, what it means to live in a home, what it means to have a school and friends and adults around you who care about you,” Immordino-Yang said.

Fifth-grader Jezzebelle Hernandez and first-grader Abel Hernanandez attend Don Benito Elementary, which reopened on Wednesday. "The mountain looked beautiful, but now it's not," Abel said, referring to the scorched slopes in the distance.

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Gilbert Moore walks his children, Patrick, left, and Daisy, right to Washington STEM Magnet Elementary. Moore, who is also a custodian in the district, said crews worked days, nights and weekends to clean up the schools.

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The Los Angeles County Office of Education and other organizations have deployed dozens of additional mental health staff to Pasadena schools since they reopened.

Juknavorian said she’s already requested support for one child who experienced some anxiety on the first day back, but was “pleasantly surprised” that her students were largely excited to return.

“Children are very resilient,” Juknavorian said. “They just have a gift of just living life and being so full of hope.”

She said in her more than 20 years of teaching, she’s watched students rebound from the loss of parents, divorce and the COVID-19 pandemic.

“They can see all, all the destruction and the homes gone, but they're going to smile again,” Juknavorian said. “They're going to move forward because that's what we do.”

Post-wildfire clean-up

Pasadena Unified has said in statements that more than 1,500 workers joined existing maintenance staff to clean schools, remove more than 159 tons of debris and the top layer of sand from playgrounds.

Wildfires can release chemicals from plastics, lead, asbestos and other toxic substances. The smoke and ash makes the air dangerous to breathe, particularly for children and pregnant people.

Several of the parents who accompanied their students on the first day back followed them into the classroom.

“Other than the worried faces on some of the parents, everything’s looked good,” Henry Ortega said after dropping his daughter off at Washington Elementary STEM Magnet on Monday.

“I drive by a lot and I've seen them working day and night,” Ortega said. “So I know they did a good job.”

After cleaning, the district tested the surfaces inside schools for soot, char and ash and published the results online.

“Every result that's come back has been positive and that our schools are safe places to be,” said Pasadena Schools Supt. Elizabeth Blanco.

California does not mandate specific cleaning or testing before schools located near wildfires can reopen, nor does it require ongoing monitoring.

Though recent rain has tamped down the ash, as it dries and debris clean-up continues, toxic materials can become airborne again.

Blanco said the district will monitor air quality and keep children indoors and restrict outdoor activity as needed.

District staff said they are communicating with the Army Corp of Engineers about debris removal and are looking into installing additional air sensors.

“We’re hearing you, we want you to feel safe returning to schools,” Blanco said after listening to parents and families give hours of public comment at a board meeting Thursday and question the district's reopening plan. "We're responsible for all of your safety ... without the regulations to help us.”

Students return, but questions remain

Each of Pasadena Unified's 14,000 students now have the option to attend school in person, but there are still a lot of unknowns.

To start: The fire destroyed or otherwise forced the relocation of six campuses, including Eliot Arts Magnet Academy, Altadena Arts Magnet Elementary, three independent charter schools and Franklin Elementary, which closed in 2020. The district has also moved several early education programs.

“We had to fit many pieces into this puzzle,” said Chief Business Officer Saman Bravo-Karimi. “We had to figure out what was best overall under very difficult circumstances.”

Bravo-Karimi noted the offers include less space than schools had before and that the district is building additional portable classrooms.

Pasadena voters approved a $900 million facilities bond and $5 million parcel tax in November to fund repairs at existing campuses, mental health support and educator wages. The district’s board of education has resolved to rebuild Eliot, though no details about cost or timeline exist yet.

Charter school leaders have not yet accepted the district’s offer to lease space at three other campuses, according to a presentation at Thursday’s board meeting.

“We created a plan to make sure they had a place within the PUSD where they could return to school at the same time we were returning to school,” Blanco said.

Odyssey South parent Veronica Jauriqui said she doesn't feel comfortable sending her son to the proposed relocation site because of its proximity to the wildfire burn zone. Several other parents have raised similar concerns.

 "We've lost our neighborhood,” Jauriqui said. “We don't want him to lose his friends and his school.”

The region’s schools are no stranger to historic upheaval. White families fled Pasadena schools following a 1970 desegregation order.

There are also the financial questions. Like other Los Angeles-area districts, Pasadena Unified enrollment has declined in recent years— 19% in the last decade.

So far, the district has counted 862 families who lost homes in the fire, and it’s unclear how many may be permanently displaced.

The district reports 90 students have unenrolled since the start of the fires. Fewer students means less funding, because California funds public schools based on an average of how many students show up each day.

Learning recovery will be another long-term issue. Results from national standardized tests show students in California — and throughout the nation — have not made up reading and math skills lost during the pandemic.

District Chief Academic Officer Helen Chan Hill said students had access to online learning materials during the closures and the district's focus on social and emotional learning as school reopened was informed by other schools that have experienced disasters.

“You have to ensure that basic needs are being met so that academics can really flourish when the time is right,” Hill said.

Blanco said the district was already working to address learning loss through summer programs.

“ We were working on that prior to COVID and making sure that students were learning grade-level content as well as making up skills that they need,” Blanco said.

The district has not announced any academic recovery programs specific to the wildfires.

UCLA’s Rogers suggested that instead of adding additional days to the calendar, schools consider how to create opportunities for students to collaborate on creative work over spring break and during the summer.

“ I think it's by taking action and showing that you can do things together with others that young people will feel a greater sense of belonging and will feel more whole in the process,” Rogers said.

SAULT STE. MARIE, Mich. — The idea came to Danielle Boyer in a toy store. The inspiration? It was Tickle Me Elmo.

"Whenever you'd press his belly, he would talk, and he would teach you things," she said. "There are toys that teach us in English, but there aren't toys that teach us Anishinaabemowin. And I wanted that to be different."

Anishinaabemowin includes the Potawatomi, Odawa and Ojibwe languages. Exact estimates vary, but there are fewer than 10,000 people in the U.S. who speak Anishinaabemowin. That number is around 25,000 in Canada. Some Native languages have just a few dozen fluent speakers, while others have none.

Boyer has seen how quickly language loss can happen. Her grandmother speaks Anishinaabemowin, but she is one of the last fluent speakers of their dialect.

"It is devastating to feel like your language could be lost," said Boyer, a member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians. "You lose your culture, you lose a way to describe who you are."

U.S. Indian boarding schools played a major role in the loss of Indigenous languages. Children separated from their families were taught, sometimes violently, not to speak their native tongues, and many did not pass them on to their children.

Today, some Native youth are learning their languages in schools. But Boyer said many of them still aren't invested. "They see it as another homework assignment."

Boyer and Hoy work on some last-minute adjustments to his AI-powered SkoBot before presenting at his school's end-of-year showcase, called the STEAM Museum.

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That's why she invented the SkoBot. It's a customizable toy robot designed to get Indigenous children excited to learn their languages.

"I can say 'Hey SkoBot, what is bear?' And it will say, 'Bear is makwa, makwa,' and it'll repeat it, right? So I can say, 'What is crane?' It'll say, 'Crane is ajijaak, ajijaak.'"

SkoBots use a form of artificial intelligence to speak Indigenous languages, and they're small enough to mount on the user's shoulder. They sort of resemble mini R2-D2 droids, from Star Wars, except these robots are designed to look like woodland creatures and decorated in Native American florals.

Through a nonprofit she started when she was 18, Boyer, now 25, has mentored hundreds of Native American children across the country, teaching them to build SkoBots of their own. One of them is 12-year-old Holden Hoy in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

"I was already a big fan of robotics and how they work, how you can bring inanimate objects to life," he said. "And I'm Ojibwe, and so I've always wanted to save the Ojibwe language."

Hoy, a rising seventh-grader, showed off his design at an end-of-the-year science fair at his school, JKL Bahweting Anishinaabe School in Sault Ste. Marie. Like Boyer, he is a member of the Sault Tribe.

He programmed his SkoBot to answer three questions ahead of his presentation. One of them was, "What's your name," to which the robot would respond in Hoy's voice: "Aaniin, Hello. Sabe indizhinikaaz, Bahweting indoonjibaa. I was built by Holden Hoy. I will not gain sentience and take over the world. Or will I?"

Hoy named his SkoBot Sabe, which means Bigfoot in Anishinaabemowin. In Ojibwe culture, Bigfoot represents honesty, one of seven sacred teachings.

His classmates and their parents stopped by his booth to see Sabe in action. Boyer was there too, helping Hoy with his presentation.

"I'm very happy that people are actually coming to this booth," Hoy said. "I'm happy that they are learning things, and I'm really happy that I'm part of the Ojibwe."

Sabe has one eye, a sensor that detects movement and lets it know to start listening.

Hoy's Sabe, or Bigfoot, SkoBot on display (right), alongside three other SkoBots that Boyer brought with her to show off at the STEAM Museum. Each represents a specific animal: a wolf, turtle and bear. Hoy's SkoBot is 3D printed in light gray, and its face is adorned with a footprint surrounded by floral designs.

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"Basically, when it hears that one trigger word, it then plays a prerecorded audio file. So there isn't synthetic speech, there isn't any generative AI," said Boyer. "It's simply listening to what you're saying, identifying it and playing [audio files] that already exist."

That means the SkoBots will never make things up, often called AI hallucinations. Hoy said it's important not to use generative AI. "AI tends to falsify things a lot, not get things from trustworthy sources."

Boyer's goal isn't to replace interactions with real language speakers. Instead, it's to get kids interested in not only their languages, but in subjects like science, math and engineering as well. That includes getting them to think about how to use AI ethically.

"Artificial intelligence, especially when it's not created by Indigenous people, stands to do a lot of harm to our communities," she said. "When you are putting accurate information into these models … you're giving away sacred information to companies that don't have our best interests at heart."

And as chatbots have become more popular, Boyer said some people have turned to them to help them learn their languages. She's even seen large language models like ChatGPT invent fake words in Anishinaabemowin, which she said is dangerous. "If we're not learning our language correctly, we shouldn't learn it at all."

Jocelyn Hoy is Holden's mom. She's excited that her son is not only exposed to their culture, but he's eager to know more. She said he's even been teaching her new things.

"As someone who, at a time in my life, did not want to be identified as Native American … now as an adult, I cannot wait to learn more, and I think the SkoBots are going to help me and so many kids — so many people in general — learn their heritage and who they are."

Holden Hoy said that heritage and the language are inseparable: "The language is the culture!"

He added, "It is important to protect it, because it's some people's way of life. Generation after generation is based around this culture."

Edited by: Steve Drummond and Lauren Migaki
Visual design and development by: LA Johnson
Copyright 2026 NPR

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Murals depicting Korean drummers, dancers and historical figures were a large part of Dave Young Kim’s childhood in Koreatown.

At the time, the Korean American artist didn’t know what all of the imagery meant, but it left a lasting impression on him.

“We don’t learn culture via formal education. It’s all gleaned,” Kim said. “It’s just what we sense, and we feel a connection to it without actually knowing anything about it. It belongs to us, and it feels very familiar.”

Many of the murals Kim remembers from his childhood have since disappeared. With his latest mural at the Korean Resource Center, Kim hopes to bring some of that visual imagery back to the neighborhood.

Completed this summer, the mural is Kim’s first in Koreatown.

The mural shows a group of traditional Korean drummers moving beneath sweeping ribbons of color, with plum blossoms blooming across the bottom of the wall. Faint outlines of traditional Korean architecture appear in the background.

At the center of the mural is 풍물놀이 (pungmulnori), a traditional Korean folk performance that combines drumming, dance and acrobatics and has long been part of village festivals and celebrations.

A close-up view of artist Dave Young Kim’s mural at the Korean Resource Center in Koreatown. The work depicts traditional Korean drummers.

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For Kim, the project was a chance to reconnect the neighborhood with the kind of cultural imagery he says shaped his own understanding of identity growing up.

“It was important to me growing up, and for me to see myself through very purposeful art, very intentional art,” he said. “For my own formation and identity, I think it was very important. I’d like to do that for future generations.”

Kim, 46, who was born and raised in Koreatown, said the project felt different from his other murals because it was rooted in the community where he spent his childhood.

“The formative years of my life are here,” he said.

The project grew out of the Abbey Mural Prize, a national grant program that supports community-based public mural projects.

As part of the project, Kim partnered with the Koreatown Storytelling Program, which trains youth to interview community elders. Students interviewed residents at Durae Crenshaw House, an affordable senior housing complex and home to the Korean Resource Center, and shared transcripts with Kim as he developed the mural.

The architecture in the mural reflects the idea of home that emerged repeatedly in interviews with elders, Kim said.

“There were a lot of iterations of the mockups. The very initial ones were very, very, very rooted in the stories, the narratives from the elders,” Kim said.

The interviews also left an impression on Daisy Yeon, 17, one of the students who conducted them. She said participating in the project changed the way she thinks about Koreatown and its history.

Yeon said she believes traditional Korean imagery still has a place in a neighborhood that has changed rapidly in recent years.

“Personally, the way Koreatown has evolved in these few last years from the pandemic and the shift where people move into other Korean enclaves like Buena Park and Torrance, Koreatown is partly becoming a place of pop-up matcha spots, for example,” she said. “So I think it’s important for tradition to still be here.”

Seeing the finished mural was “a full-circle moment,” she said, after spending months interviewing elders whose stories became part of the artwork.

While researching Koreatown’s public art history, Kim learned many of the murals he saw as a kid grew out of cultural initiatives and public funding that no longer exist. He also discovered an earlier generation of Korean American muralists whose work once covered parts of Koreatown.

In 1993, artist Dong-In Park completed a mural of traditional Korean farmers’ dance in the Korean Community Center at 981 S. Western Ave.

He told the Los Angeles Times he hoped “the 1.5- and second-generation Korean kids” would not forget their language and history. Park, along with artists including Sonia Hahn and Kuk Chol Han, helped establish a tradition of public art celebrating Korean culture during the late 1980s and early 1990s.

An undated photo of Dong-In Park’s mural depicting a farmers band playing music and dancing to provide entertainment for Korea’s largely agricultural population. The mural was previously located at 981 Western Avenue in Koreatown.

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Kim wants his mural to carry that tradition forward while also reflecting the history of the community it was created for.

The Korean Resource Center, founded by South Korean democracy activist Yoon Han-bong, has long organized around immigrant rights, workers’ rights and civic engagement. During the project, Kim learned that traditional Korean drumming has long played a role in the organization’s activism.

In the mural, an older drummer who immigrated from Korea leads the group, followed by a middle-aged performer who learned from him and younger drummers wearing sneakers, modeled after college students who continue the tradition today.

“Where we landed was very much to the core of what KRC is,” Kim said. “They are very activist and progressive.”

The Koreatown of today is filled with Korean-owned businesses and Korean-language signs, Kim said, but far fewer public murals reflecting Korean culture.

His latest mural isn’t about recreating the past so much as restoring something he believes has faded from the neighborhood.

As an artist, Kim said, public art has the power to shape how people experience a place.

“There’s something about the everyday landscape that you kind of are forced to take in,” he said, “and then as an artist, having the ability to shape what that might be.”

Lineage Logistics, the company that operates the burned cold-storage warehouse in Boyle Heights, announced yesterday it's removed “nearly half” of the food waste there.

The waste, the company said, has been sealed in deodorized containers and is being transported off-site.

Lineage estimated that demolition and cleanup of the rest of the burned structure should be largely completed in the “coming days.”

Before the weeklong fire that began on June 17, the warehouse stored approximately 44,000 tons, or 88 million pounds, of food.

The company said it has started removing the wall separating the burned and unburned sections of the building this weekend to speed up the cleaning of the unburned structure.

The process includes installing plastic sheeting where the wall used to be to help tamp down odors

That part could take up to three days and may temporarily increase odors. To mitigate the smell, the company said three carbon filters will be added on the Union Pacific side of the warehouse.

The company is trying to meet a 45-day deadline set by L.A. Mayor Karen Bass to complete the cleanup. Lineage has faced citations and warnings from L.A. County and the South Coast Air Quality Management District for "an ongoing odor nuisance" and “unsanitary and nuisance conditions.”

A slate of popular peptide therapies has won the backing of a key advisory panel to the federal government — a step that could eventually open up broader access to the experimental drugs.

In a marathon two-day meeting last week, the panel of doctors, academics and pharmacists recommended the Food and Drug Administration reclassify almost all of the compounds under consideration so that specialized pharmacies in the U.S. could begin offering them.

Seven different peptide therapies — none of which are FDA-approved drugs — were under consideration.

Currently, these peptides can't be made in the U.S., except for research purposes, leading many peptide users to buy unvetted substances sold online, with disclaimers such as "for research use only" and "not for human consumption."

By narrow margins, the panel voted in favor of all but one. The FDA isn't required to follow advisory committee recommendations but typically does.

The outcome represents a win for Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has publicly supported peptide therapies, and the broader wellness and longevity industry, which stands to profit substantially.

These peptides are promoted for a wide range of uses and are often taken together, including for injury recovery, muscle growth and fat loss, improving athletic performance, enhancing metabolism and more.

If the agency takes the panel's recommendations, clinicians could have the ability to prescribe six peptide therapies: BPC-157, MOTS-c, KPV, TB-500, Epitalon and Semax.

A compound called Emideltide, sometimes used for insomnia, was the only one to receive a down vote.

The panel's endorsement of peptides was a striking rejection of the FDA's stance against them.

While the level of evidence for each compound varies, all of them lack the kind of large, well-controlled trials in humans that are necessary to establish safety and effectiveness, which is required for drug approvals. Peptides are strings of amino acids — smaller than a protein — that often act as signaling molecules in our bodies and carry out many critical functions.

They can be synthesized and delivered as drugs, often by injection. Some of those, like insulin, are naturally occurring in the body. Others are modified versions, as with the blockbuster GLP-1 obesity drugs.

Scientists for the agency spoke extensively about the lack of reliable data for any of the seven peptides before the committee. They advised the panel to vote no.

In some cases, they couldn't find any published clinical studies in humans — and there were safety concerns like the potential to encourage cancer growth or to trigger a massive immune response.

A "foundational challenge" was simply defining the substances, because the chemical composition for peptides labeled with the same name varied considerably, explained FDA official Russell Wesdyk.

"You will see many, many different forms," he said. "We can't create quality standards until we actually know what it is."

The divide among the experts on the panel was a study in contrasts.

Ahead of the meeting, eight new members were appointed. Most have ties to the peptide industry and include physicians who work for medical practices and companies that promote them.

In almost all cases, they voted in favor of lifting restrictions.

A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services pushed back on criticism about potential conflicts of interest and said all underwent the standard ethics and vetting process.

"I think it's about patient access," said Dr. Asare Christian, one of the panel members who runs a Pennsylvania-based clinic that advertises peptide protocols and hormone optimization.

That sentiment was echoed throughout the many hours of public comment.

Compounding pharmacies, large telehealth providers and others from the industry underscored the perils of the unregulated marketplace, with some offering anecdotes of patients obtaining unmarked vials from sketchy suppliers.

"What we are advocating for is not the Wild West," said Brigham Buhler, who runs a telehealth company that offers hormone optimization and peptides and is an ally of Secretary Kennedy.

"What we are advocating for is to slow down or shut down the gray and black market and to allow patients to have a safe and effective manufacturing process," he told the panel.

But some panelists were skeptical of that argument.

"I'm concerned that we are responding to market-induced demand rather than a decision based in solid science," Dr. Elizabeth Rebello, an anaesthesiologist at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, commented after casting a no vote.

The FDA committee was tasked with reviewing data that supports using these peptides to treat a variety of specific conditions, such as BPC-157 for treating ulcerative colitis, an inflammatory bowel disease.

However, if the FDA ultimately reclassifies them and they are produced by compounding pharmacies in the U.S., clinicians would have discretion to write prescriptions outside of those narrow indications.

During the meeting, industry groups — and some on the panel — repeatedly criticized the FDA presentations for not reflecting more recent scientific data on the substances, including results from other human studies that had been submitted ahead of time.

FDA staff said they had considered everything submitted by the meeting deadline and would still take new information into account as they weigh next steps.

The decision to place the products on the FDA's official list for compounding doesn't come close to the standards for drug approval, but some worry that nuance will not be clear to the public, which may not be aware of the limited data for humans.

"I think this endorsement can be potentially harmful and I cannot in good conscience vote yes," said Dr. Brian Lee, a member of the panel and an associate professor at the Keck School of Medicine of USC.

If the FDA moves to reclassify the peptides so that compounding pharmacies can make them, it will be through a formal rulemaking process that could stretch into next year or 2028. There is a possibility that Kennedy could invoke special authority to make them available sooner.

The panel is scheduled to meet again in February to consider additional peptide therapies.
Copyright 2026 NPR