Not all high school educations are created equal - See Carmel High School (Carmel, IN), New Trier High School (Winnetka, IL), or any other High School in a densely high wealth area.

While Pasadena is a relatively wealthy city, historically there has been significant avoidance of its public schools by affluent residents: https://southerneducation.org/in-the-news/new-polling-data-f...

Pasadena school district spends $28K / student for their total $390M expenditures across ~14k students in 2023-2024 school year. I would bet dollars to doughnuts it's $30k+ per high school student since they are more expensive.