Editorial: School Board Should Delay Closure Decision

Too many unanswered questions 

On April 22 the Sonoma Valley Unified School Board of Trustees approved a directive to proceed toward the closure of the Flowery Elementary School in June 2026. Trustees are attempting to rectify the near $2 million budget deficit with that proposed closure, and the already in-the-works-closure of Adele Harrison Middle School in June 2025. Student population in the District has declined by 40 percent since 2012, except at Flowery, which has a wait list. 

Numerous questions regarding school closure and the budget deficit remain unclear or unanswered as the District Trustees push for an imminent decision point. To foster public understanding and clear up confusion about the final decision, we call on Superintendent Jeanette Rodriguez-Chien to hold a public meeting prior to May 8, when the Trustees plan to finalize site closure and program removal. We also urge her to recommend delaying that decision until substantive information is made available for the input of the whole community. The deficit is real, but fast-tracking the decision at this point is not smart.

The public has not seen statistics which support either of these closures as a solution to the budget crisis. Also, additional costs of transportation that would be mandated by a Flowery closure need to be considered. In June 2023 the District closed Dunbar School and the public still not seen statistics explaining the savings to the District from that closure. 

The proposed closure of Flowery is highly problematic. It is the only school in the District which not only has not lost enrollment but has a wait list. Since the late 1990s Flowery has been a school-wide Dual Immersion (DI) school. DI is a long-proven educational system designed to educate together a 50/50 balance of students from Spanish-speaking and English-speaking homes to become fully bilingual and literate in both languages. The success of the DI model depends upon all participants, from both English-speaking and Spanish-speaking homes, starting in kindergarten. And the training and credentials of the DI teachers are integral to the program.

DI is demonstrably a highly successful program. Testing of District-wide English learners for English proficiency shows Flowery’s students in the “green” on the State of California School Dashboard (caschooldashbaord.org), whereas the English learners from El Verano were in “orange,” and English learners from both Sassarini and Prestwood were in the “red.” 

Flowery is a neighborhood school, meaning enrollment preference is given to students who live within the Area 2 attendance boundary. Students from outside that area must participate in a lottery. Flowery and DI are inextricably linked. Ironically, in their directive to District staff, the Trustees asked staff to report on how to move “Flowery” –i.e., the DI program with its current 360 students – to Sassarini School. 

This is a board dominated by new trustees. David Bell and Jason Lehman ran unopposed in the 2024 board election, and Gerardo Guzmán was appointed April 22. At his first meeting, Trustee Guzmán urged the board not to delay the closure decision, saying correctly, “That can has already been kicked,” and pointing to the very real deficit the Trustees must correct. 

But we first want to see figures which substantiate the premise that closing sites will cure the deficit. And if those figures do show that, we still believe the selection of Flowery School as the elementary site to be closed in June 2026, is a serious mistake. 

To move the 360 students in the DI program to Sassarini entails a wholesale displacement of that school’s current students and teachers. Sassarini parents and teachers have been advocating for keeping their school open, but they did not envision the displacement of the majority of their teachers and students by the Dual Immersion teachers and students.

We believe that our schools should be located where the students live. The Springs and El Verano clearly are home to the majority of the 65 percent Latino students in District schools. And these are the children of the workforce of the Valley, many working several jobs, for whom the connections important to their children’s school that they highly value would be sacrificed to the closure. 

Of the three elementary sites which received substantial bond monies for improvement, Prestwood, Sassarini and El Verano, Sassarini was the choice for the location of the Dual Immersion program due to state-designated programs at Prestwood and El Verano. El Verano is a Community School, a designation earned by its selection as a hub for adult classes, social services, and community gatherings. Prestwood’s story is distinct. To shore up the declining population at the eastside school, in 2023 the Board moved to that site four Extensive Support Needs (ESN) classrooms, formerly located at Dunbar. ESN had been placed at Dunbar as a life-support effort for that site, but ultimately it was not enough to keep it open. With enrollment of about less than 100, many of them bussed, including the ESN students, Dunbar School was closed in June 2023. Another move for the fragile students enrolled in ESN is very unfortunate, but Sassarini or El Verano are well-placed to welcome them for the long haul.

Closing Prestwood would cause the least community-wide disruption, much preferable to relocating nearly the entire student populations of both Flowery and Sassarini. And in our “Sonoma Valley” it only makes sense that two of three District elementary schools, Flowery and El Verano, are located where the majority of the Valley’s population and student population live, not within the City. This is a socio-economic reality.

And closing Flowery, while making Sassarini a Dual Immersion “magnet” school, with students coming from all over the District, will result in the continuing necessity of lots more bussing, and a big uptick in traffic on Fifth Street West. Bussing is a failed experiment nationwide. Let’s hope Sonoma Valley Unified Trustees consider all these points, delay their decision and don’t jump on that obsolete bus!

–The Sun Editorial Board