When San Jose Unified School District decided to shutter five elementary schools earlier this year, officials made several promises to ensure a smooth transition for families with students set to attend new campuses.
They pledged guaranteed transportation, priority waitlists and transparent communication — commitments, some parents say, school leaders did not keep.
“There’s a huge disconnect between the actual experience that parents are having and the district articulation of what they’re doing,” said Emma Strong, a parent at Walter L. Bachrodt Elementary School.
The concerns come as students begin a new school year, with relocated students returning to class earlier this week at their new schools.
In an effort to address a 20 percent decline in district enrollment since 2017, school leaders in March approved the “Schools of Tomorrow” closure of five elementary schools — Terrell, Canoas, Lowell, Gardner and Empire Gardens as well as the relocation of the Hammer Montessori magnet program at Galarza to Gardner Elementary. The consolidations were expected to impact 1,665 students and reshape neighborhoods across the district.
Families and staff fought the plan for months, worried that the closures would disproportionately affect minority, low-income and special education students and harm all students’ academic and social well-being. San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan and State Sen. Dave Cortese also urged the district to reconsider.
But supporters assert the consolidations offer equitable resources and instruction to all students in the district and a better working environment for educators and staff.
San Jose Teachers Association President Renata Sanchez said the consolidations provide teachers with more support and smaller classes, and additional resources like counselors and visual and performing arts instructors. It also gives students a more diverse learning experience, she added.
“When students are with the exact same cohort of peers as they move through grades, that can actually lead to both social and disciplinary issues,” Sanchez said. “So mixing up students … helps to spread out students’ needs, both their academic and social-emotional needs, so that everyone can have stronger instruction.”
As part of the consolidation, the district made several commitments to parents, students and staff to ease the transition. They promised increased funding to closing and receiving schools, no-cost access to afterschool programs for affected families, as well as employee job guarantees and a one-time payment of $1,500 to impacted workers to ease their transition to a new work location.
After picking up Gio Naughton, 7, and other students, a school bus leaves the closed Terrell Elementary School on Aug. 7, 2026, in San Jose, Calif. Terrell Elementary School closed along with four other campuses earlier this year. Naughton now attends Rachel Carson Elementary. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)
Transfers
The district also said that students from closing schools would get priority for intradistrict transfer requests to another San Jose Unified elementary school — subject to availability.
“Available space is not just the physical space of the school site,” said the district’s manager of special projects, Ben Spielberg, at a June 26 board meeting. “It also is related to the staffing at the school site that we have.”
Spielberg said about 66% of impacted families agreed to attend their new assigned school, while about 381 families requested to go to a different school. Of those families, the district accommodated 69% of the requests, while about 118 families were not transferred to their preferred school, Spielberg said.
He said the majority of the 118 requests that were not accommodated were for campuses that typically have a waiting list — like Willow Glen, Booksin and Merritt Trace elementary schools, the district’s magnet schools and schools in the Almaden Valley.
“Those are the schools that are wealthier and have much higher white and non-minority enrollment,” said Strong, the Bachrodt Elementary parent.
“They’ve really botched the waitlist,” said Travis Curran, a parent of two Reed Elementary school students. “What basically happened is that when people were trying to apply to get into schools in the more affluent areas or the more highly regarded schools, those were basically just flat no’s.”
Transportation
San Jose Unified also promised bus transportation to students from closing schools who live outside the walk zone — a 1.5-mile radius — of their new campus for the entirety of their elementary school experience, subject to annual review by the district’s school board.
But parents said transportation was only guaranteed for families who agreed to attend their new assigned school, not those who requested an intradistrict transfer.
Jenna Minter said when the district voted to close Terrell Elementary School, she had 12 days to choose between moving her first- and fourth-grade children to their new assigned school, Rachel Carson Elementary School, or requesting a transfer to another school.
Minter said she requested to transfer schools but ultimately decided to keep her children at Rachel Carson Elementary, because the school start time aligned better with her work schedule. But because she applied for an intradistrict transfer, Minter said she lost her opportunity to apply for priority busing, despite living 1.6 miles away from her children’s new school.
Minter said she was able to request busing over the summer and was alerted that her children’s bus passes were available to pick up the day before the first day of school.
But when she went to pick up the passes, Minter said she realized they were Valley Transportation Authority bus passes. After more research, Minter said she realized her six- and nine-year-old children would need to leave an hour before school started to make class.
“It was just mind-blowing,” Minter said. “I’m not going to put my six-year-old on public transportation, especially almost an hour before school starts.”
Seth Reddy, the district’s chief business officer, said Thursday that the district offers Valley Transportation Authority passes for some students, usually older, who live outside of the walk zone of their school, but the district doesn’t have the resources to bus. Reddy said it’s always a family’s choice whether to request a VTA pass.
“It wouldn’t just be like they were being assigned to a VTA pass and that’s the only option that they have for transportation,” Reddy said. “For our students that were affected by Schools of Tomorrow, they will not be offered VTA. They will be provided San Jose Unified transportation.”
Minter said Thursday that Reddy reached out to her later that day to alert her that the VTA passes were an error and her children will be able to use San Jose Unified bus transportation starting Friday. She said Reddy also told her the district’s transportation department would investigate whether any other families received the VTA passes in error.
“My trust with the district is zero,” Minter said. “The vote to close five schools with such huge percentages of low-income students, making resources harder for those students — that does not reassure me that they have the best interest in mind for a lot of the students.”
Coordination
Maeve Naughton, a parent of a former Terrell student, called district communication and planning “disappointing,” pointing to delayed bus schedule routes and a poorly timed first-through-third-grade meetup at Rachel Carson Elementary for the schools’ new and returning students.
Gio Naughton, 7, and his mother, Maeve Naughton, talk at Gio’s old school, Terrell Elementary School, before getting on a school bus to take him to his new school on Friday, Aug. 7, 2026. Terrell Elementary closed along with four other campuses earlier this year. Gio now attends Rachel Carson Elementary. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)
Naughton said as students arrived for the meetup at the school’s blacktop, the district began filling in a hole on the blacktop from a tree that had been removed earlier in the summer.
“It’s just the lack of communication between the departments within the school district and the lack of communication with parents,” Naughton said.
Reddy acknowledged at the June 26 board meeting that while the district has worked hard to ensure smooth school consolidation, that doesn’t negate parents’ individual experiences, which may have been different.
In an interview Thursday, he said the district is focused on regaining families’ trust.
“Conversations about school consolidations, attendance boundary changes, relocating programs — those are understandably really challenging and hard and cause worry, frustration, anxiety,” Reddy said. “We’re focused on upholding those commitments, delivering on all of them because the actions speak louder than words and that’s how we will rebuild the trust.”
But for some San Jose Unified parents, the damage is done.
“I have no trust in them at all,” said Terrell parent Naughton, who said she was planning to leave San Jose Unified after leaders voted to close her school and four others.
“It was a tough choice not to leave,” Naughton said. “I don’t want to give Nancy (Albarrán) more fodder to say, ‘another student has left the district, we have to close more schools next year.’”
Naughton said her son, Gio, was devastated in the spring to say goodbye to his school and some of his classmates who would not be transitioning to Rachel Carson Elementary.
“But about two weeks ago, we were in the car and out of nowhere he says, ‘Mommy, I can’t wait to go to Carson … because I get to make new friends,’ Naughton recalled. “I’m trying to have an open mind. Change is always hard, but this will work out.”
In the parking lot of the closed Terrell Elementary school, Gio Naughton, 7, walks up to a school bus to take him to his new school on Friday, Aug. 7, 2026, in San Jose, Calif. Terrell Elementary closed along with four other campuses earlier this year. Naughton now attends Rachel Carson Elementary. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)