By Anna Pier
Flowery School parents, students, grandparents and graduates gathered at Sonoma Plaza Friday, May 23 to protest the Sonoma Valley Unified School Trustees’ vote to close, in June 2026, the bilingual elementary school located in the heart of the Springs. Protest organizer Nancy Íñiguez said they came to the Plaza so more people see who they are and what they are standing for. Protestors held up signs a variety of messages, some in English and others in Spanish, including “Our Future Matters,” “Our Children, Our Voice, We are Flowery,” and “Latino Kids Matter.”
Flowery neighbor Chelsea Livingston, parent of a transitional kindergartener and a fifth grader, told the Sun, “The majority of cars, trucks and commercial vehicles who drove by honked enthusiastically or gave a thumbs up.” The Trustees propose to close the school and move the entire Dual Immersion program, currently 368 students plus teachers and aides, to another site in town, probably Sassarini School. Livingston added, “The community understands the importance of Flowery’s location for the surrounding business and nonprofit community, as well as the success of the dual immersion program.”
Seily Alcocer came to protest with her three children, two who are Flowery alums, one currently at Sonoma State, the other a UC Berkeley grad who lives in the Springs and hopes to send his children to Flowery. Alcocer, who for twenty years has lived in the Burbank affordable housing project on Vailetti Drive, Springs Village, affirmed the importance of the Flowery site. “All of us have always walked to the school. Some of my neighbors don’t drive. It’s very important to us to be able to walk to our school, to connect with it.”
Springs resident Dana Bravo, whose daughter is in first grade, commented, “It’s not the fault of the neighboring community that the District chose not to invest recent bond funds in Flowery. It is the location that does not make sense to close.” She pointed out that the “heat map” on the District website shows the densest student population lives surrounding Flowery in the Springs. She and many others hope that the three studies that the District must complete before finalizing the decision to close the site will argue against that closure. Flowery is the only school in the District without declining enrollment; it has a wait list.
The transportation study should include traffic at the relocated site, and the cost and feasibility of years of bussing students out of the Springs. The transition study should address the consequences of uprooting Flowery’s 368 students plus teachers and transferring them to another school, where a large part of that school’s student body will be uprooted. The District also needs to accomplish a California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) review. Details of the studies, and a deadline for accomplishing them, have not been released.
The Friday evening event followed a second successful noontime protest on Wednesday, May 21 on the corner of Highway 12 and Depot Road, which leads down to the school. Flowery parents invite supporters to join them there again 12:30 – 1:30 p.m. on Wednesday, May 28.
As the article pointed out, Flowery is the school that SHOULD have been the most obvious to keep open, while Prestwood is the school that is clearly the most appropriate to close. That’s according to the current student population numbers provided by the SVUSD, not some outside group. Not to mention the dual immersion program. I’ll be cancelled by the editor if I point out the glaringly obvious reason that a school attended by more students, and in a neighborhood with more students, is the one that was slated for closure. No political body in the valley would ever dare to favor the Springs over the east side of Sonoma if there is a choice to be made.