By Anna Pier
At the regular May 8 meeting of the Sonoma Valley Unified School District, the Board of Trustees addressed many important issues, including approving the layoff of 35 teachers, a retroactive raise for the Superintendent who had just resigned, a contract approval for the first phase of seismic upgrades to Altimira Middle School, and a vote to close Flowery Elementary School in June 2026. The vote was 4-1, with the newest trustee, Gerardo Guzmán, who represents the attendance area for Flowery, the sole ‘nay’ vote.
Guzmán, who had been sworn in on April 11, appealed to his fellow trustees to postpone the decision and, when they did not, voted against the school’s closure. He urged the need for an equity impact study. Guzmán also identified his personal story with the story of the many Flowery parents – the immigrant workforce of Sonoma Valley – many of whom came to the meeting, and asked the board during public comment to keep their children’s school in their neighborhood.
Flowery, located at 17600 Sonoma Highway near the corner of Depot Road, is in the heart of the most populous area in the Valley, and many students walk to school there. Of the four elementary schools open, Flowery is the only site that not only has not experienced enrollment decline, but has a wait list for its schoolwide dual immersion program. Established in 1998, this highly successful program educates, from Kindergarten through fifth grade, a cohort of 50-percent native English speakers and 50-percent native Spanish speakers to become bilingual and literate in both languages, while following the same curriculum that students in other schools in the District follow.
What is behind the decision to close Flowery School? A dramatically declining student population district-wide created the need for site closure in Sonoma Valley, as in many districts throughout the state. It is widely assumed that a primary cause for declining enrollment is the lack of affordable housing in the district. The present student population has declined by more than 40-percent since 2012. In June 2023, the Trustees closed Dunbar School in Glen Ellen, which at the time had fewer than 100 students. The trending demographic for Sonoma is older and wealthier – a population that either does not have school-age children, or can afford to send their students to far-more expensive private schools outside the Valley.
To address this painful reality, in 2023 – her first year – Superintendent Jeanette Rodriguéz-Chien appointed a School Consolidation Committee (SCC) comprised of 18 community members, who met throughout 2024. The Trustees had directed the SCC to bring a recommendation for the closure of a middle school and a second elementary site. In their report to the Board in November 2024, the Committee recommended closing Adele Harrison, but not until June 2026. They did not select an elementary site to close.
Contrary to the recommendation of the SCC, the Trustees voted to close Adele Harrison in June 2025, consolidating all middle school students at Altimira, the site with the capacity for the approximate total of 650 students. Previous boards had neglected to accomplish the seismic upgrades recommended for Altimira, so the current board has earmarked the remaining Measure funds to accomplish that work.
At the time of the Adele Harrison closure decision, the Board also committed to identifying, before the end of the 2024-25 school year, which elementary site would be closed in June 2026.
In a Study Session following the April 2025 regular meeting, the Trustees preliminarily identified Flowery as that site. Sassarini, El Verano and Prestwood elementary schools were ruled out because the board had recently invested bond funds in those three sites for construction of new multipurpose rooms. The decision by previous trustees to not give equal investment of recent bond funds to Flowery appears to have prejudiced its standing.
By a different measure, two sites that have “state designations” were also ruled out. One was Prestwood, hosting since 2023 the small cohort of Extensive Special Needs (ESN) students moved from Dunbar. With a new Transitional Kindergarten, there are now 38 ESN students. The other was El Verano which, since 2017, has been designated a Community School, home to the La Luz Family Resource Center and many afternoon and evening classes, support programs and events for the neighboring community. So Flowery, the home of the District’s popular, successful dual immersion program, located in the heart of its student population center, was selected by default. The trustees directed Superintendent Chien to have District staff prepare preliminary information about resulting transportation costs, and the logistics of moving the dual immersion program with all its students and teachers, to Sassarini, with its students and staff.
The information the trustees requested in April, which should have informed their deliberations, was not included in the Board agenda packet published prior to the May 8 meeting. Neither the superintendent nor the President of the Board, Catarina Landry, responded to queries from the press about this study that the trustees had requested.
On May 8, the lobby and City Council Chambers, site of the SVUSD Board meeting, were packed and overflowing with people from the Springs, come to appeal to the Trustees not to close Flowery. In their allotted 90 seconds – half of the usual three minutes – 33 people spoke about their deep connection to their neighborhood school, and about how the dual immersion program was integral to their community. These families represent not only the workforce of our Valley but, officially, the most vulnerable, underserved community. That they would be inequitably affected by the loss of their neighborhood school urges an equity impact study prior to finalizing a decision.
And to move a complete school – currently 368 students with their teachers – to another site, creates enormous logistical and educational challenges for the Flowery cohort and the teachers, staff and students of the destination school, presumably Sassarini. The Trustees, before voting, said the decision was not final, but was contingent upon the outcome of studies in three areas: transportation; transfer; and a required CEQA review.
All of this leaves a variety of important questions dangling, unanswered in the minds of the Flowery community, and in the eyes of the press. This newspaper has asked for more information about the comparative cost savings of closing Flowery versus the cost of moving the entire dual-immersion program to Sassarini, and the longterm bussing this entails. No one outside the District (and perhaps within) understands how all the logistical challenges of moving Flowery to Sassarini will play out in budget terms, program terms, busing terms and all the attendant costs.
Some Flowery parents and supporters – it begs stating – question whether the decision not to close Prestwood was influenced by the fact that the school is located in the wealthiest and perhaps most influential neighborhood in the District. If Flowery is closed, the Springs, far the most populous area in the Valley, but historically underrepresented and underserved, will be left with one District elementary school, while the City, with its geriatric demographic, will have two schools. Some critics of the choice to close Flowery call it de facto institutional racism. In any light, it clearly calls for a study of equity impact.
We are looking for answers from a District under the management of a superintendent who has rendered herself a lame duck through her resignation. And the Board itself has only two members – President Catarina Landry and Anne Ching – who were part of the consolidation process from its inception. Only Ching is competitively elected; Catarina Landry, Jason Lehman and David Bell ran uncontested in their areas; and Gerado Guzmán was appointed by the board last month to fill a vacancy.
The controversy over the choice of Flowery underscores the existential reality that the location of a community school is not just about school board budgets, or specific curricula or capital investment in one campus over another. Perhaps as important as all those important factors, is the quality of community culture, how a school unites a community, fosters parent participation, and invests community members more deeply in the education and socialization of their children. The final decision is critical to the future of our entire Valley.
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