The San Jose Unified School District (SJUSD) is taking steps to close up to nine elementary schools as early as August. Thousands of parents have asked to stop the school closures, but Superintendent Nancy Albarr\u00e1n has not shown willingness to take this input. This demonstrates the need for new district leadership.<\/p>\n
Unlike many districts facing funding cuts due to lower enrollment that subsequently leads to schools closures, SJUSD is funded by local property taxes and is not financially obligated to close any schools<\/a>.<\/p>\n If it\u2019s difficult to understand why SJUSD would be so unresponsive to the community\u2019s outcry<\/a>, it\u2019s crucial to know that Superintendent Albarr\u00e1n and Chief Business Officer Seth Reddy are graduates of the Broad Academy and Broad Residency, respectively. These are billionaire-founded programs<\/a> that seek to \u201cfix\u201d public education with corporate tactics that prioritize the bottom line, take power away from unions and families and most often result in charter schools expanding.<\/p>\n In November 2024, voters approved Measure R<\/a>, which provides SJUSD with $1.15 billion in bonds to \u201ccomplete identified repairs and improvements across all school sites.\u201d SJUSD did not disclose that when it passed, they would instead seek to close schools. This is duplicitous.<\/p>\n Rather than spend the money as voters intended, SJUSD is taking drastic steps to make elementary schools into a supposed \u201cideal\u201d size of three to four classes per grade level. To achieve this, smaller schools would be closed and their students redistributed<\/a>. Superintendent Albarr\u00e1n says this is needed to improve quality, but students and parents are saying their small schools are high quality.<\/p>\n The harm of school closures cannot be understated. David Goldberg, president of the California Teachers Association, says: \u201cClosing schools is the last thing we should be doing. Schools are a safety net in so many communities. \u2026 Disrupting that is a setback that is hard to undo.\u201d<\/p>\n In contrast, the president of SJUSD\u2019s teachers union spoke supportively about closures. This may be because the San Jose Teachers Association presidents automatically serve as part of Superintendent Albarr\u00e1n\u2019s cabinet, which is a very unusual arrangement between unionized labor and district administration.<\/p>\n A civil grand jury described SJUSD<\/a> \u201cleadership culture (as) characterized by tolerance for verbally abusive behaviors, lack of a safe space to communicate, (and) low morale.\u201d Only the SJUSD school board has the ability to address this by firing the superintendent.<\/p>\n If not addressed, thousands of young students will be displaced in August. Some children as young as 4 and 5 years old will have to walk up to 1.5 miles to reach their new classrooms. Special education students could be taken out of familiar routines.<\/p>\n SJUSD was ordered by a judge to racially desegregate in 1986, but has never fully done so. Rachel Carson Elementary in SJUSD, however, is racially integrated, yet it is slated for closure in every scenario put forward by SJUSD. There are under 240 Black elementary students in SJUSD<\/a>, or 2.2%. But as many as 36% of Black elementary students could be displaced, compared to just 13% of white students. Where is SJUSD\u2019s \u201ccommitment\u201d to equity?<\/p>\n