Students are excited — and some parents worry — as Palisades High School reopens

Palisades Charter High School is reopening Tuesday a little more than a year after fire tore through campus and the surrounding community.

The Palisades Fire destroyed 30% of the campus, including classrooms, the track and field. Now there is a wide grassy expanse where the “J” building once stood. Bulldozers cleared the baseball diamond to make way for three dozen portable classrooms. Many of the campus’ trees are still standing with blackened trunks.

A few of the 2,400 students expected to return in-person toured the campus Monday, including junior Jackson Richmond. He said despite the changes, the campus still feels familiar.

“Nothing just beats like the look of Pali,” Richmond said. “Like it's in movies for a reason.”

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But other Palisades families are more cautious about returning. Some parents have raised concerns about whether the remediation efforts went far enough and how the test results were communicated to families.

“ I have mixed feelings,” said Victoria Kotlyar, parent of two sophomores. “I'm happy that they're gonna have a school to go to, but I am concerned about just the environment and if there's any pollution.”

The process to reopen the school included debris removal, cleaning, and multiple rounds of soil, water, air and surface testing in the new and remaining buildings.

Temporary classrooms at Palisades Charter High School.

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Mariana Dale

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“At the moment, I'm 100% convinced that we are in a very safe environment,” said Principal Pamela Magee on Monday. “We've got folks watching out to make sure that that continues into the future.”

Environmental testing continues

Pali High was once part of the Los Angeles Unified School District. The school converted to an independently run charter school in 1993, but continues to lease its campus from the district.

LAUSD coordinated and paid for the post-fire clean-up.

The district also hired outside contractors to test, clean and retest the soil, water, air and surfaces in the remaining and new structures for toxins related to the wildfire.  

 ”As we cleared spaces, we tested them immediately afterwards to make sure…the cleaning was effective,” said Jennifer Flores, LAUSD’s deputy director of the Office of Environmental Health and Safety, in a virtual community meeting on January 21.

Flores said the district re-tested in November and December 2025 to ensure the campus was not harmed by the demolition and construction in the surrounding neighborhoods.

“This is not that we're doing one large environmental test and we're done now,” Flores said. “We will be doing periodic sampling and analysis at this school and all the schools that were directly impacted by the fire.”

For example, the district has installed air sensors at the school that can detect two types of particulate matter (PM10 and PM2.5) and nitrogen dioxide, which are associated with pollution.

District officials and contractors said testing cleared the vast majority of the school for occupancy. The areas that remain closed include the “stadium by the sea,” pool and related buildings, which are still under construction and anticipated to reopen by the end of February, according to Palisades High Director of Operations Rafael Negroe.

Friday, the school district asked a group of researchers studying the health impacts of the fires to review a summary of the clean-up efforts and test results.

A grassy field at Palisades Charter High School where a building once stood.

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Mariana Dale

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LAist

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The study co-leads, including UCLA environmental health sciences professor Yifang Zhu, concluded they would be comfortable sending their own children back to Pali High. (Zhu said she and her colleagues were not compensated for their evaluation.)

“There's always chemicals you can detect, but I think we should really think through the lens…what is the additional level of risk?” Zhu said.

Zhu, whose daughter is a recent graduate of the school, said the decision is ultimately up to each family.

“There's no such thing as zero risk,” Zhu said. “Risk is very personal. Every family is…different.”