Nestled in an East Sacramento neighborhood off of J Street sits the 4.5-acre tree-filled 100-year-old Mediterranean-style A. Warren McClaskey Adult Education Center. If you walk through the halls of the center today, you’ll realize the school’s emptiness.
The center, formerly the El Dorado Elementary School, opened its doors in 1921 and closed in 1975. It was reopened as the adult education center in 1977.
One side of the center houses an artisan upholstery collective class that teaches students how to redesign and manage furniture. The rooms that they utilize are filled with old furniture, tools and loose fabric.
A brisk walk to the opposite end of the school will take you to the one other remaining program, which serves students with developmental and other disabilities. Tucked along the outside of their classrooms are vibrant gardens of vegetables and native plants that they maintain daily.
The Gilmore Garden located outside of the A. Warren McClaskey Adult Center where the adults with disabilities help maintain daily.Keyshawn Davis/CapRadio
Together, these two classes are the last to utilize the A. Warren McClaskey Adult Education Center before they are scheduled to be relocated, losing the place they’ve called home for so many years.
In 2025, the Sacramento Unified School District said the school is “underutilized” and should be deemed as surplus property, which is a way a local governing board, or 7-11 committee, can vote to sell the property.
The Sacramento City Unified School District is currently facing a budget crisis of more than $100 million. Due to the district’s financial issues and the McClaskey School being 90% empty, it is scheduled to close on June 30, 2026.
Jody Bryan, who has been an upholstery student at the adult education center since 1990, said that last July the principal of McClaskey, who runs the disabled adult program, told them the school was shutting down and moving the disabled group out.
“In 100 years, lots of things change,” Bryan said. “Electricity, heating and air codes. So I think, other than it being underutilized, one of the other things is the Sac City Unified [School District] is bankrupt and has been several times over the years, and they just don’t have the money to bring it up to date.”
SCUSD stated in an email that much of the McClaskey campus is not currently up to code for educational use without investment.
“We have minimal offerings currently at the McClaskey site right now, approximately just five classrooms in use for a campus of that size, compared to Charles A Jones, and that’s why it’s difficult to justify keeping both sites open for Adult Education,” Al Goldberg, communications manager, wrote.
The upholstery class, with 20 members, is facing challenges finding an affordable space and needs about 1,500 square feet, according to Bryan.
The class became the Artisan Upholstery Collective nonprofit to rent the rooms at a reasonable rate through Facilitron, which is a third-party company the district uses to lease classrooms.
Bryan said people get into upholstery to update old, inherited furniture with sentimental value.
“It’s tearing down a chair, sofa…. to the bare bones, the major structure, and then rebuilding it back up, reupholstering it with new everything,” Bryan said. “We all have furniture, we have sofas, chairs, ottomans, piano benches, rocking chairs. Most all those pieces of furniture have upholstery.”
One of the classrooms that the Artisan Upholstery Collective utilizes when working with fabric.Keyshawn Davis/CapRadio
One of the problems with the school closing down and the program being relocated is that most of the members are retired and living off a limited budget and income to pay rent, according to Bryan.
“It is [important] for people as they age, to stay involved, stay busy, to stay in community, to have relationships with other people, to continue with skill if they’ve got one, or begin a new one,” Bryan said.
Shannon Ross, the member at large of Artisan Upholstery Collective, a nonprofit, and founder of the East Sacramento Neighbors for Smart Growth. Ross is on the 7-11 Committee that will advise the school board on the future use of the McClaskey school property.
Ross said AUC is actively seeking a new space for the upholstery class while negotiating with the district not to move school locations.
“We were told that we could move to a different school location, but that seems to keep changing,” Ross said. “We were told one school, then we were told no, then we were told there’d be another location, and no one’s getting back to us. So we’re having a lot of difficulty persuading them to allow us to have a space somewhere. Allow us to rent a space.”
In an email, the district stated that the programs will not shut down but will be moved to the Charles A. Jones Career and Education Center on Lemon Hill.
The email also stated that Charles A. Jones’ property has the available space to house all of the adult education services.
Despite the looming relocation of the upholstery class and the shutdown of the adult education center, Ross said it’s important that people never give up.
“We don’t want to lose the building, and we don’t want to really lose our class, we would keep our class going there if we could, even though it’s kind of a creaky old building,” Ross said. “It’s not like a brand new maker space or something, but we make it work because the class has been so important to us to come together in a community just doing something.”
The 7-11 committee will meet this summer to develop recommendations on the McClaskey Center.
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