How does someone go from changing locks to overseeing the environmental destruction of Pasadena's public schools? That is the question community members are asking about Michael Dunning, Pasadena Unified School District's (PUSD) Director of Facilities, Maintenance, Operations, and Transportation.

According to his own professional background, Dunning spent over eight years working for PUSD as a Lead Carpenter and Locksmith before a rapid ascent saw him named Facilities Program Manager in March 2024, and then Director of Facilities in March 2025. Now tasked with managing major district bond-funded projects worth hundreds of millions of dollars, he has become the architect of a massive and legally questionable clear-cutting operation. Just 15 months into his tenure as Director, Dunning is deeply embroiled in a controversy that has residents asking: Is this catastrophic ineptitude, or flagrant regulatory fraud?

Caught Red-Handed at His Own Meeting

The most damning moment may have come not from an investigative report, but from PUSD's own facilities meeting this week, during which members of the public were given the opportunity to speak. What emerged was stunning: other members of the board and district council appeared to have no idea that independent experts had never actually recommended removing these trees. The supposed scientific basis for this entire operation - the justification that is allowing Dunning's team to fell nearly 200 mature trees across 9 school sites - had apparently never been communicated to, or verified by, his own colleagues.

So the question that now hangs over every stump on every campus is this: Has Michael Dunning been lying to the district he serves? Or has he simply been operating in a silo so deep that no one thought to ask whether the experts actually signed off?

The "Emergency" Loophole and Hidden Agendas

Under the guise of an "emergency" soil remediation project stemming from the 2025 Eaton Fire, Dunning and PUSD are executing a plan to remove 193 mature trees across 9 district sites. The district claims these trees must be removed to access contaminated soil. Community advocates point out that tree removal is an independent physical act that is completely outside the authorized scope of the CEQA emergency exemption for soil cleanup.

But the scope of the problem is even more precise than that. DTSC - the state agency ostensibly overseeing this operation - has only approved tree removals at three of the 11 campuses: Longfellow, San Rafael, and Franklin. Yet chainsaws are running at sites far beyond those three. Who authorized tree removal at the other eight? The answer, increasingly, appears to be Michael Dunning.

Why bypass standard environmental review? Residents are beginning to suspect hidden agendas. By framing these removals as an "emergency," the district has felled trees without obtaining permits or consulting the city's Forestry Division, completely bypassing Pasadena's strict municipal tree ordinances. This has sparked serious concerns that PUSD is quietly clearing mature trees to increase the resale value of parcels - making properties highly attractive to future private developers. Another resident, posting on Instagram, questions whether building expansions could be among the hidden pet projects.

Did Dunning Mislead the City of Pasadena?

Here is a question that has gone unanswered: Did Michael Dunning - or anyone acting on his behalf - tell the City of Pasadena's Planning Department that DTSC was recommending these tree removals? If so, that representation was false. According to public records made available thus far, DTSC approved tree removal at only three sites, and that approval came after the public forum had already been held. The city was apparently never given the full picture. If it turns out that PUSD sought or obtained any city-level cooperation based on a misrepresentation of DTSC's scope of approval, that is a serious problem - and one that implicates not just Dunning but the city officials who may have relied on his word.

Who Owns the Tree Removal List?

One of the most troubling open questions in this entire affair is simple: Who created the list of trees to be removed?

Evidence suggests that West Coast Arborists assembled an initial inventory. But the list that was ultimately provided to contractors bears only PUSD's logo on the letterhead - no arborist name, no certification, no professional attribution whatsoever. Michael Dunning, by all accounts, appears to have had final say over which trees made the cut. Board Report No. 1966-F, which authorized the $6.6 million contract, contains no arborist attribution at all.

That absence is not a minor administrative oversight. It is the difference between a professionally defensible removal program and an arbitrary one. When you remove trees that fall outside the soil remediation zones entirely, and you cannot point to a licensed arborist who signed off on that decision, you do not have a science-based remediation plan. You have a clearcut with a cover story.

Why Are They Ignoring the Updated Data?

Verdantas, Inc. - PUSD's own environmental consultant - has produced updated testing results that should, in principle, determine which trees are even relevant to the contamination question. Those results apparently have not been used to revise the removal list. Trees are coming down based on earlier assessments, even as more current data sits unused.

If the science has been updated and the removal list hasn't followed, the question isn't whether Michael Dunning made a mistake. The question is whether he chose not to look.

Fudging the Numbers

The situation goes beyond administrative overreach. Independent certified arborists have already documented glaring irregularities in the DBH (diameter at breast height) measurements recorded on DTSC and PUSD's official removal list. DBH is the standard measurement used to determine whether a tree requires protected status and municipal permits. Deliberately manipulating these figures to place trees below protection thresholds constitutes misrepresentation in a public regulatory process - a potential fraud violation that could trigger an investigation by the California Attorney General.

Public Records Requests: The Clock Has Run Out

Under California law, public agencies are required to respond to California Public Records Act (CPRA) requests within defined legal deadlines. Pasadena residents have submitted requests and are targeting critical documents including the West Coast Arborists assessments, and the escrow bid documents that would allow the public to see what the district is actually paying for tree removal versus soil remediation.

CPRA requests have gone unanswered. When a public agency stonewalls records requests on a project this contested, it is not a clerical delay. It is a message. And it raises an obvious question: what is in those documents that PUSD doesn't want the public to see?

The Bottom Line

Pasadena's students deserve safe campuses. Taxpayers deserve a solvent, transparent school district. What they have instead is a former locksmith - now managing hundreds of millions in voter-approved bond money - who cannot produce a single arborist's name to justify nearly 200 tree removals, has blown past legal deadlines on public records requests, and is running chainsaws at eight sites that no state or city agency ever authorized. The cover story is elaborate. The accountability is nonexistent. Pasadena deserves to know exactly who Michael Dunning is - and how he managed to drag PUSD, DTSC, and the City of Pasadena into a multi-front legal, regulatory, and criminal exposure crisis.