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.

Both of Jackie and Shadow’s eaglets have left the nest — but one of the famous Big Bear birds fell more than flew.

Luna, the younger eaglet, took its first flight away from their Jeffrey pine tree a little before 9:30 a.m. Monday as thousands of fans watched on the nest’s popular YouTube livestream. The livestream is run by the environmental nonprofit Friends of Big Bear Valley, which is also working to preserve acres of land in the area.

Luna left about a day after Sandy, the elder eaglet, toppled down the tree and out of view of the cameras.

Sandy did end up taking its first flight — which is called fledging — albeit in an unexpected way. Friends of Big Bear Valley said Sandy “fludged” before the eaglet was seen soaring to another area shortly after Sunday’s fall.

“Though it is up to Sandy and Luna, in the past, the eaglets have come back to the nest to eat, sleep or just hang out together,” the organization wrote on Facebook to its more than 1 million followers. “Stay tuned, this family affair isn’t over…”

Jackie and Shadow, Big Bear Valley’s resident bald eagle couple, have now successfully fledged six chicks together: Simba in 2019, Spirit in 2022, Sunny and Gizmo last year and Sandy and Luna this season.

Sandy and Luna lift off

The Big Bear bald eaglets have historically fledged when they’re around 13 weeks old, according to Friends of Big Bear Valley. Sandy, which the nonprofit believes to be a female, and Luna, believed to be a male, are a little more than 12 weeks old.

The eaglets were preparing for the big leap in recent weeks by venturing further onto branches and stretching their wings in the wind to build up strength.

The duo were on an outer part of the tree Sunday morning when Luna tried to jump over its sibling, but the eaglet’s talons got tangled and Sandy fell to the branches below.

Sandy was spotted on Friends of Big Bear Valley’s security camera shortly after, flying away from the nest tree and to another area out of view.

“Sandy looked good in her flight, and she is likely relaxing from her unexpected adventure,” the nonprofit said on social media Sunday. “Jackie and Shadow will now follow her wherever she goes and make sure she is fed and taken care of.”

Luna had a more graceful strategy, flying to a nearby tree where Shadow was waiting. Friends of Big Bear Valley said fans "will likely see some family gatherings” once Sandy and Luna make their way around the habitat.

Last season’s eaglets, Sunny and Gizmo, fledged in early June and were last seen near the nest about three weeks later.

Access to the area around Jackie and Shadow's nest is restricted in Big Bear Valley on June 13, 2026.

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‘Grand adventures’ ahead

Jackie and Shadow are expected to continue caring for Sandy and Luna while they’re in Big Bear Valley. That includes finding food as the eaglets get better at flying, and eventually, hunting on their own.

Eaglets generally leave the area they were raised by fall of the year they hatched, according to Friends of Big Bear Valley. Young eagles travel far and wide, with banded birds being tracked up to 2,000 miles away.

Once the birds reach maturity at around 5 years old, they look for their own mate and build a nest in a new territory.

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Last week, Felipe Hernandez saw fewer customers than usual. The produce vendor had already lost some foot traffic in East L.A. due to the ongoing ICE raids and COVID before that, but after the Lineage warehouse fire blanketed the area in smoke, Hernandez felt like everyone disappeared all at once.

“I think this was worse [than COVID]. They all really went away just like that — but this time it was on a whole new level,” said Hernandez, who works afternoons at Ponciano Produce, his nephew’s produce truck.

Claudia Hernandez, owner of Mariscos El Manglar in East L.A., closed early on the first day of the fire because she couldn’t handle the amount of smoke blowing at her food truck, parked one mile away.

“With the raids, sales dropped by 60%,” said Hernandez. “And this week, because of the smoke, they’ve gone down by about 80%.”

The compounding effect of the ICE raids and now a week full of smoke due to the Lineage fire, has left small businesses in both Boyle Heights and East L.A. struggling more than ever. 

Many businesses were forced to close entirely due to the intensity of the smoke and others that did open served even fewer customers as people were forced to stay indoors or leave the area.

According to a report from the UCLA Latino Policy & Politics Institute nearly 13,600 jobs are located within the smoke advisory zone, 66% are held by Hispanic or Latino individuals.

The report notes that many small businesses in retail, accommodation, and food service closed or experienced a steep decline in clients.

Cristina Medrano works on a customer’s hair at Kassandra’s Salon in Boyle Heights in Los Angeles, Calif. on June 26, 2026.

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Hair stylist Cristina Medrano fought back tears when thinking of the impacts ICE have had on her customers at Kassandra’s Salon and the greater Boyle Heights community.

“Our people are scared. All of us are, right? We go through a certain amount of stress regarding our people, it really is very difficult,” said Medrano. “Even though it doesn’t affect us directly, our people do go out but they go out afraid.”

After the fire Medrano was forced to cancel appointments due to customers’ concerns about the smoke. She says she never expected the fire to go on for as long as it did.

“It’s been more than we expected, a whole week like this. And there’s still more to come, just think of everything that’s in the air, what we’re breathing in. But we have to work. I mean, you can’t just sit around doing nothing, we have to keep going,” Medrano said.

On Wednesday, Inclusive Action, the Boyle Heights Chamber of Commerce and the Hustle & Heart Collective launched the Boyle Heights Fire Relief Fund for Small Businesses, targeting brick and mortar shops and street vendors in the four zip codes around the Lineage fire.

“Some businesses are still trying to come out of the hole that they were put in because of the ICE raids today,” said Rudy Espinoza, CEO of Inclusive Action. “So then you layer this new fire for the especially the small businesses on the east side and it’s just like another obstacle for them to get ahead and to take care of their families and to make payroll for their workers.”

Applications are not open yet but they are accepting donations via GoFundMe.

Councilmember Ysabel Jurado’s office is also working with the Emergency Management Department and the Boyle Heights Business Source Center to connect impacted businesses and street vendors to city resources,

After struggling with a loss of about 65% of their sales after the ICE raids, Tacos Los Arabes in Boyle Heights lost about 35% in sales during the week of the fire, according to Jonathan Villegas, one of the sons of the family-owned Tacos Los Arabes. 

“It was an unfortunate thing to happen but it’s in the past. We’re trying to move on and we don’t think it’s going to affect the future for now because it seems under control, but the raids are still in the back of people’s minds. They’re a little bit more ready to go out, but you still hear stories about people being raided” Villegas said.

Villegas said he appreciated when customers would wear N95 masks to support his business during the week despite the obstacles facing the community.

Israel's Cabinet unanimously approved a proposal on Sunday to designate violence against Armenians by the Ottoman Empire during World War I as a genocide.

The step, which still needs approval in Parliament, reflects deteriorating ties between Israel and Turkey. Turkey has fiercely lobbied to prevent countries from officially recognizing the mass deaths of Armenians around 1915 as a genocide, even as Armenians have pushed for it.

Historians estimate that up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed by Ottoman Turks around the time of World War I, an event widely viewed by scholars as the first genocide of the 20th century. Turkey denies that the deaths constituted genocide, saying the toll has been inflated and that those killed were victims of civil war and unrest.

For years, Israel never officially broached the subject for fear of angering Turkey, but that relationship has soured over the past two decades, especially as the most recent wars in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran have dragged on.

"Despite the extensive and unambiguous historical documentation, the Armenian Genocide remains to this day the subject of an institutionalized campaign of denial and minimization, including a manipulative rewriting of history, mainly by the Turkish government," said Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar, who brought the decision to the government.

He noted that Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have previously described the violence against Armenians as a genocide. But it has never been formally recognized in a vote by Israel's Knesset.

"It is never too late to do the right thing," Saar said Sunday, calling it a "moral and historical duty."

He noted that 32 countries, including the United States, Syria and Lebanon, have also classified the violence as a genocide. It was not immediately known when Sunday's decision, approved unanimously by Israel's Cabinet, would go to the parliament for approval.

Turkey called Israel's move a "politically motivated" step meant to distract from the country's own actions against Palestinians.

"The Israeli government, which systematically persecutes the Palestinian people in full view of the world and is being tried at the International Court of Justice for genocide against the people of Gaza, aims to cover up its own crimes," the Turkish Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

"This malicious attempt, which disregards legal and historical facts, reveals the predicament of Netanyahu and his accomplices, who have arrest warrants against them in connection with the investigation into crimes committed against Palestinians at the International Criminal Court," the statement added.

Israel and Turkey were once close allies, but relations soured during the rise of Turkey's Islamist President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, leading Israel to reconsider its position.

Israel has faced repeated accusations, including from the United Nations and Turkey, that its offensive in Gaza amounts to genocide. Israel, founded in the wake of the Holocaust, denies the accusations.

Israel launched the war in response to Hamas' Oct. 7, 2023, attack. Gaza's Health Ministry, part of the Hamas government, says over 73,000 people have been killed, roughly half of them women and children. Israel says it does not target civilians and accuses Hamas of using civilians as human shields.

Last week, a team of independent experts commissioned by the United Nations accused Israel of deliberately shooting children in Gaza and repeated accusations that Israel has carried out a genocide. Israel called the report a "libelous sham."
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The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld a Mississippi law that allows election officials to count mail-in ballots that are postmarked by Election Day but received up to five days after it.

The ruling is a loss for the Republican Party, which brought the case, ahead of this year's midterm elections.

Eighteen states and territories, including Mississippi, have such mail ballot grace periods. Most of the states are Democratic-led, including California, Illinois and New York. A dozen additional states have grace periods for ballots returning from overseas, like from military members.

The court's ruling was 5-4, with Justice Amy Coney Barrett authoring the opinion, joined in the majority by Chief Justice John Roberts and the court's liberal wing of Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

"[T]he election-day statutes require the electorate's choice to be made on election day. That occurs so long as election day is the deadline for individuals to vote—as it is in Mississippi," Barrett wrote. "But the election-day statutes do not set a deadline for ballot receipt, so they do not prevent Mississippi from counting ballots postmarked before election day yet received afterward."

Justice Samuel Alito authored the dissent, writing in part that the "majority's holding spawns a slurry of troubling election-law questions and risks further undermining Americans' confidence in election integrity."

How the battle over grace periods ended up at the Supreme Court

These grace periods have historically provided voters time to get their absentee ballots to officials in case there are any issues with the Postal Service — as well as any other unforeseen issues, such as weather events.

But Republicans have been fighting these grace periods in recent years — an effort led by President Trump.

Ahead of the 2024 election, the Republican National Committee and the Trump campaign filed legal challenges — including one against Mississippi's law — alleging that these grace periods violate the Constitution. They argued that Congress sets the end of an election, not states.

At the time, many of the lawsuits were dismissed by judges across the country, but the conservative 5th Circuit Court of Appeals sided with Republicans, setting up the Supreme Court case.

Trump also signed an executive order last year — which was quickly blocked by lower courts — that required that all votes be received by Election Day during federal elections.

Many state officials, particularly in Democratic-run states with universal mail-in ballot programs, raised concerns about such a requirement.

Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs said in a statement last year that more than 250,000 ballots that had been postmarked on time arrived after Election Day during the 2024 election.

"Had this rule been in effect," he said, "those voices would have been silenced, especially in rural areas where mail delivery can take longer."
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