Sonoma Valley school board votes against closing Dunbar Elementary, holds no vote on larger plan to reconfigure district

After considerable public input and discussion, the Sonoma Valley Unified School District’s Board of Trustees voted March 9 against a proposal to close Dunbar Elementary but did not vote on the larger plan to reconfigure schools and other facilities as early as 2023-24.

Trustee John Kelly created the proposal, which included several consolidation changes beginning in the 2023-24 school year, including closing Altimira Middle School and closing or transforming the district’s five elementary schools: Dunbar, El Verano, Flowery, Prestwood and Sassarini. His proposal would have consolidated grades K-5 at El Verano and Flowery elementary schools and grades 6-8 at Adele Harrison Middle School.

The space at Prestwood and Sassarini, as well as at Altimira Middle School, would have been converted into affordable housing for staff, teachers and families.

Kelly’s proposal was an action item on the board’s agenda for the March 9 meeting — at which it was standing room only — but during the discussion among trustees, it became clear a majority of them did not support the proposal, and no motion was made to vote on it.

Consolidation proposals are being considered largely due to steadily declining student enrollment, which has fallen from 5,000 in the 2004-05 academic year to 4,200 in 2010-11 and 3,265 in 2023-24, with additional sizable declines expected in the next few years.

“The board has a monumental decision ahead of it that will have a lasting impact well beyond my lifetime,” said Anne Ching, president of the board. “We are duty-bound to our norms and the process that we have established. As board president, I cannot in good faith rush into a decision without proper analysis of such things as school programming, finance, legal constraints, transportation and traffic patterns, and land use limitations.

“No single person should determine the fate of where our children go to school. This is a collective decision, and we need to work alongside parents, teachers and the community at large.”

Stefanie Jordan, principal of Sassarini and a parent, urged board members to vote against Kelly’s plan during the public comment portion of the agenda item.

“This plan was developed without any consultation with teachers or principals,” she said. “I’ve spoken with many members of the community who have described this plan as misjudged and badly timed, and this is all certainly true.”

She said the plan is “reckless” and “hurtful” because many factors had not been thought through, and it has upset parents and students in the district.

Sarah Tracy, a parent of two Sonoma Charter School students and the volunteer communications for the schools’ parent-teacher organization, also voiced concerns with the proposal.

“It is absurd to think that this board has had sufficient time to consider such a proposal,” she said. “I hope that the board votes ‘no,’ or at the very least, continues this item at a future meeting that takes place after district staff has had sufficient time to complete their community outreach efforts that are currently underway.”

Also, the Sonoma Valley Executive Director’s Round Table — a group of nonprofit industry professionals — sent an email to all the trustees and Elizabeth Kaufman, the district’s acting superintendent, on March 9 in which it voiced concerns about Kelly’s proposal.

“These are monumentally impactful decisions that will shape Sonoma Valley, and many small neighborhoods therein, for generations to come,” states a portion of the email. “We feel strongly that decisions of this nature should be handled with extreme care, caution and with the thoughtful integration of input from all corners of the Valley. Executing this before next school year simply will not allow for the due diligence a decision this consequential requires.”

Plans call for the board to make decisions regarding its facilities plan that will impact the 2023-24 school year at its regular meeting April 20.

“I think that the decisions might happen in two phases,” Ching said. “A decision is close one school is likely to happen by that date.”

The board did, however, vote on one aspect of Kelly’s proposal at the March 9 meeting: to close Dunbar Elementary in Glen Ellen by the beginning of the 2023-24 school year. But the motion was defeated by a 3-2 vote, with trustees Ching, Troy Knox and Catarina Landry opposed and Kelly and Celeste Winders in favor of it. Those who were opposed voiced concern over making the decision without additional input and discussion.

Twenty Dunbar administrators, staff members and teachers, including Principal Elizabeth Stevenson, sent an email to all Board of Trustees members on March 8 expressing their need to know if Dunbar will close and if so, what this will mean for staff, teachers and students.

“The ongoing ambiguity of Dunbar’s status has generated an undercurrent of stress for Dunbar’s students, staff and families,” they wrote in part. “If Dunbar will not be in regular operation next year, we need clear guidance so that we can best support our students and their families as they transition to a new school. We also need to know soon — before April 20 — so we can make plans to celebrate our long history as a public school and begin the process of determining our futures.”

Kelly had several conversations with Kaufman about the possibility of closing Dunbar, which has seen its enrollment drop by 25%, from 150 in 2021-22 to 113 students (94 general education students and 19 students in self-contained, special education classrooms) in 2022-23.

Dunbar is operating without a bilingual community liaison, a permanent teacher for its fifth grade class and K-2 self-contained class, and other support services needed to provide an optimal and equitable education for students.

Kelly said given Dunbar’s situation, it essentially will need to be “the first domino to fall” in the reorganization process.

“Most likely, the next step for Sonoma Valley Unified School District would have been to have Flowery transition from a dual immersion site to a community school, to accept the Dunbar students,” Kelly said. “That would require rehoming the dual immersion program, which would set off the all-too-real process of confronting the financial imperative of a 3-1-1 footprint (three elementary schools, one middle school and one high school) for the district, for the current alignment of the schools depends upon the continued expenditure of one-time money.”

Ching said, in her view, “everything is still on the table” as the board considers realignment possibilities.

“We’re collecting parents’ feedback to find out what’s important to them,” she said. “Consolidation of resources means we can have better services and better programming for kids. Right now, we’re spreading resources very thinly across all nine campuses.”

Reach the reporter, Dan Johnson, at daniel.johnson@sonomanews.com.