On September 23, the Trustees of our Sonoma Valley School District identified Prestwood School as the elementary site to close at the end of the current school year. The choice of Prestwood, on the Eastside of Sonoma, was a rational decision. It was also a courageous one and, we believe, the moral decision as well.
The Sonoma Valley School District Trustees have been faced with the need to close three schools in the District for years. Sharply and continually declining enrollment since 2012 has been dictating this drastic downsizing, but earlier trustees delayed the inevitable and instead, spent down the District’s reserves.
In 2022, consultants hired by the District concluded, after a thorough and well-documented study, that the appropriate number of schools for the student population in the District would be one high school, one middle school, and three elementary schools. At that time there were two middle schools and five elementary schools.
In a delayed and prolonged decision process that was painful to the whole school community, Dunbar Elementary, with approximately 115 students, was closed as a District-supported school in June 2023. Last spring the Trustees closed Adele Harrison Middle School, located on the Eastside next to the high school, and the 2025-26 school year opened with all District middle school students (6th, 7th and 8th) consolidated at Altimira, on the Westside, and the only school with the capacity for that entire population. That left the Trustees one elementary school to close to achieve the recommended 3 -1-1 configuration – three elementary, one middle and one high school. (Creekside, the very small alternative high school with fifty-some 11th and 12th grade students, is counted as part of Sonoma High.)
In May the Trustees identified Flowery as the school to close, but in June rescinded that decision. But it is essential to point out that the reason for rescinding the resolution to close Flowery is the same as the reason for choosing Prestwood: it’s all a question of where the students are. 100 of our elementary students live east of Broadway; 300 live to the west. So the new decision was rational.
But there is more to District statistics than the residential distribution of its students. A key part of the statistical picture is the fact that something over 66 percent of all District students are identified as Hispanic/Latino. And they live overwhelmingly on the West side, a very obvious indication of household income and an important window into the unfolding demographic trends in Sonoma Valley. Their parents are the workforce of our Valley, and for many, greater distance from their children’s school is a serious hardship. The Attorney General’s anti-discrimination directive in the Guidelines for School Consolidation comes into play here; the Trustees viewed their consolidation decision through the lens of equity.
And, among other things, this demographic trend underscores the importance – if not the necessity – of bilingual learning, a highly-rated program founded and still anchored at Flowery School, in the heart of a bilingual neighborhood, and within walking distance for an important percentage of students.
The process of identifying which elementary site to close has been prolonged and painful; as Board president Catarina Landry pointed out, the Trustees’ delay has encouraged division in a District which, for the benefit of all its students, desperately needs to live up to its official name, Sonoma Valley Unified. Trustee Jason Lehman commented at the end of the meeting that “it was going to take the adults in the room to support this decision.” He is spot on with that observation, and we fervently hope they do.
–Sonoma Valley Sun Editorial Board
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