Alleging Discrimination, San José Parents Try to Fight School Closures

San José parents are attempting to stop the city’s public school district from shuttering five campuses, alleging in a legal complaint that the plan would disproportionately impact low-income students and students of color.

Families filed the complaint with the San José Unified School District’s school board ahead of a vote on the closure plan on Thursday.

“This process has been discriminatory in its impact, misleading in how it has been presented to families, and procedurally deficient,” parent David Friedlander, who is leading the effort, said at a press conference on Wednesday.

Earlier this month, a committee of about 20 teachers, principals, parents and other community members recommended the board shutter Empire Gardens, Lowell, Gardner, Canoas and Terrell elementary schools and relocate Hammer Montessori to the Gardner campus at the end of the year.

It said the reorganization plan, dubbed “Schools of Tomorrow,” aims to address a 20% decline in enrollment — a loss of 6,000 students — since 2017. In that time, the number of elementary schools with fewer than 350 students has doubled from six to 12.

The committee’s recommendation said that shrinking enrollment could lead to reduced staffing, hurting programs like art and music at small schools, and increasing the need for combined grade classes at district schools.

“The Schools of Tomorrow process is a response to these challenges that will enable us to address declining enrollment in a positive, student-centered way,” SJUSD said on its website.

But parents say the plan to close schools has been rushed, and should be a “last resort.”

“We want our community to have input. We want to improve the programs that are in the schools. We want to do this in a thoughtful way,” Friedlander, a Hammer Montessori parent, told KQED.

They also said the final list of campuses that will close discriminates against students of color and low-income families.

According to Maeve Naughton, a parent at Terrell Elementary, all five of the campuses that could shutter are Title I schools.

“Title I schools exist for one reason — to serve children living in poverty. Children who already carry burdens that most of us will never fully understand,” she said in a statement.

Friedlander said that up to nine school closures were initially considered, but “when they moved to fewer schools, it really shifted to targeting entirely Title I schools.”

“These schools are heavily Latino. They are also primarily socioeconomically disadvantaged students, foster youth, kids with special needs,” he told KQED.

Between 72% and 91% of the students at four of the schools recommended for closure identify as Hispanic or Latino, compared to about 55.2% of all SJUSD students, according to California Department of Education data.

“Those are way higher on that metric than the district average, and those are the schools targeted,” Friedlander continued.

The complaint alleges that this discrimination violates state and federal protections and that the closure process hasn’t included enough community input or an analysis examining the equity for affected students.

SJUSD did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday.

The district said it identified the schools to close based on enrollment, targeting schools with fewer than 300 students, and took into account whether they had special education and bilingual programs. On its website, SJUSD said its “ideal” elementary school would have three classes per grade level, or four classes at schools with English immersion and bilingual programs.

The district will be required to conduct an investigation into the claims and report its findings within 60 days. Depending on its conclusion, the parents could appeal to the state department of education.

Friedlander said, in part, parents filed the complaint to get ahead of any decision the school board makes Thursday night. He said, depending on the outcome of the meeting, further legal challenges could follow.

“We are not going away. We are organized, we are filing through proper legal channels, and we expect answers,” he said.