Letter to the Editor:
On June 5, 2025, the Burbank Unified School District Board of Education publicly announced that it had accepted Dr. John Paramo’s resignation as superintendent. They made it clear there was no settlement package. He was no longer an employee. One month later, that resignation was memorialized in a Personnel Report.
Today, nine months later, the board is poised to retroactively convert that resignation into a retirement.
Let’s be clear: Dr. Paramo is eligible to retire through California State Teachers’ Retirement System whenever he chooses. He will receive his pension. That is not the issue.
The issue is whether this Board will now undo its own formal action in order to grant Dr. Paramo a district-specific benefit— health coverage until age 65—something not available to employees who resign.
Resignations and retirements are not interchangeable administrative labels. They carry different eligibility consequences under district policy. On June 5, 2025, the board exercised its authority under Burbank Unified School District governance policy to accept a resignation. That action in itself was complete.
Retroactively rewriting history to create a financial obligation that did not exist at the time of separation undermines public trust and calls into question the integrity of Board action in this case.
To date, the public has not heard when or how this board authorized a change of benefit status for Dr. Paramo from resignation to retirement. There are also fiscal implications. If health benefits have already been reimbursed retroactively – before this board publicly approved retirement status – then district funds may have been expended without prior governing board authorization. Contrary to its insistence otherwise, the Board of Education is conducting business in a way that is far from transparent.
My strong recommendation to the Board: do not approve this change at any time. Dr. Paramo chose his off-ramp from BUSD in June of 2025.
Please vote no and honor your original action. The taxpayers, students, staff and parents of Burbank deserve no less in the wake of the Charlene Tabet scandal.
Les Cohen
Burbank
