Name: Newark school officials vote to close two elementary schools to help make ends meet
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Newark school officials vote to close two elementary schools to help make ends meet

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By | Bay Area News GroupNEWARK — H.A. Snow Elementary School will be permanently closed after the current school year, and E.L. Musick Elementary School will be shuttered the following year, Newark school officials decided Thursday in a controversial move to save money and stem the tide of a rising budget deficit in a district with a history of mismanagement.Newark Unified School District board president Elisa Martinez, and board members Phuong Nguyen and Bowen Zhang voted in favor of the decision, while board member Ray Rodriguez was absent.The board also voted to convert its only junior high school into a middle school beginning in the 2022-23 school year, and move all sixth graders from around the district to that school.Some people who called into the meeting became emotional discussing the possible closures, as did Zhang at one point during the board’s lengthy deliberation on the issue.“I do have a special emotional connection to Musick,” Zhang said.“These are real people we are impacting, but at the end of the day we need to make the most objective decision,” Martinez said.School officials say the closures are necessary because of a decade of declining enrollment. The district has lost 1,455 students since 2009-10, or about 21 percent of its enrollment since that time, causing a significant decline in revenue, staff reports said.The board pledged to cut about $6 million over the current and coming school years, and staff estimated two elementary school closures could save about $1 million, but the board only voted to close one school in the coming year.“The $500,000 will need to come from somewhere, whether its reserves or additional reductions,” Marie dela Cruz, the district’s chief business official said, which the board will evaluate in the coming weeks.In the weeks leading up to Thursday’s decision, parents, staff, and students marched and protested over the issue, and some accused the school district of a lack of transparency and equity in the process of selecting schools for possible closure.A school closure committee recommended the board consider four elementary schools for closure: Graham, Musick, Lincoln, and Snow, with Graham and Musick selected as the top two.Among other factors Thursday, the board favored closing Snow and consolidating it into Graham because Graham has the space to absorb all of Snow’s 307 students, so kids won’t be split up.Martinez said closing Musick would affect less students, as it has the lowest enrollment, and it is projected to decline in coming years.About two dozen parents, students, and residents from around the district called into the board meeting Thursday to voice displeasure over the closures, and to vouch for their schools.Some pointed out the investments made at Musick in recent years to accommodate students from a shuttered preschool. Musick houses a large number of special education students, along with a high proportion of English-learner students and low-income students.“To be honest, our family has the resources to find a better school situation should we need to, but there are many in our community that do not have that option, and many of those folks are disproportionately affected by the shutdowns proposed,” Musick parent Mitch Patenaude said.“Musick Elementary is the building that our family calls home and a place where we all feel safe,” Tara White, a mother of a student at the school said at the meeting. “We insist, if you move us, the move to our new home has room for our entire family to stay together.”.The board required that when Musick is closed, the district will ensure its students are apportioned to a maximum of two different schools.“The closing of a school seems like we are trying to stay afloat on a ship that is sinking rather than fixing the leak that is causing the boat to sink,” Amber Nolazco-Torres, a junior at Newark Memorial High School said. “The closure was due to a lack of enrollment, and the lack of enrollment was due to a variety of issues within our schools that are overlooked.”She shared some experiences of her time in Newark schools like teachers lacking basic supplies in classrooms forced to ask for donations, and one class that never got assigned a permanent teacher.Student board member Wahhab Salemi&nbsp;also said the district should have been more clear with parents about the process since last year, when the discussion over closing schools began.“Many students and parents didn’t know this conversation was even happening. Why didn’t we send something out to each parent?,” he asked.Some, including Salemi, have blamed the district’s history of mismanagement for at least part of the problem.“There have been other mistakes that have led to this deficit which have nothing to do with enrollment and I think the failure for us to own up to that, it’s a mistake,” Salemi said.The district lost a bid to recoup almost $450,000 in legal fees for fighting a a years-long public records lawsuit, and paid out almost $250,000 total in lump sums to several managers in the district earlier this year to resolve a longstanding vacation accrual and scheduling oversight error in the district.A state fiscal review agency in an August report said the district was suffering from a lack of planning and continuity due to “turnover in key leadership positions including board members, superintendent, chief business official, and several other department administrators.”The agency also said the district has a “lack of critical controls” in its business office that have caused “insufficient budgeting and monitoring of funds…insufficient cash flow projections,” and a “failure to analyze and disclose the effects of negotiations prior to settlement.”“We’re trying to get a lot of things done that probably should have been done a long time ago,” Martinez said, noting the board doesn’t have a long term strategic plan in place for the district.“This board inherited a mess. We inherited a very tough situation,” Zhang said.“If you for some reason go to an emergency room, you first stop the bleeding, then you fix the organs. This district in many ways is in an emergency room,” he said. “The buck stops at us, pretty much.”We invite you to use our commenting platform to engage in insightful conversations about issues in our community. We reserve the right at all times to remove any information or materials that are unlawful, threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, pornographic, profane, indecent or otherwise objectionable to us, and to disclose any information necessary to satisfy the law, regulation, or government request. We might permanently block any user who abuses these conditions.Get Morning Report and other email newslettersFollow UsMost PopularClose

By | Bay Area News GroupNEWARK — H.A. Snow Elementary School will be permanently closed after the current school year, and E.L. Musick Elementary School will be shuttered the following year, Newark school officials decided Thursday in a controversial move to save money and stem the tide of a rising budget deficit in a district with a history of mismanagement.Newark Unified School District board president Elisa Martinez, and board members Phuong Nguyen and Bowen Zhang voted in favor of the decision, while board member Ray Rodriguez was absent.The board also voted to convert its only junior...

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Newark school officials vote to close two elementary schools to help make ends meet

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