San Jose’s largest school district is preparing to shut down five elementary schools before the next academic year. All five serve low-income families. Parents are pushing back. The school board president has received campaign donations from charter school advocates. And neighboring districts have already closed a dozen campuses.
What’s Happening
San Jose Unified School District runs 41 schools serving 25,000 students from transitional kindergarten through 12th grade. Since 2017, the district has lost more than 6,000 students — a 20% drop. Nearly half of its 26 elementary schools now serve fewer than 350 children. The smallest has 200 students. The largest has more than 800.
In the fall of 2025, the district launched an initiative called Schools of Tomorrow. The premise is simple: an “ideal” elementary school has three classes per grade level. When enrollment falls short, grades get combined. When second- and third-graders share one classroom, that’s no longer an “ideal” school. That’s what’s already happening at roughly a dozen San Jose Unified campuses.
To address the problem, the district formed two committees — one advisory, one focused on implementation. Twenty-three volunteers drawn from parents, teachers, and district staff held dozens of meetings between December and March. The original proposal called for closing nine schools. On March 10, the committee narrowed the list to five.
Which Schools May Close
The committee recommended closing Canoas Elementary, Empire Gardens Elementary, Gardner Elementary, Lowell Elementary, and Terrell Elementary. All five are Title I schools, meaning the majority of their students come from low-income households. Parents and advocates were quick to point out the pattern: all five schools predominantly serve Latino and Black families.
In addition to the closures, the committee recommended relocating the Hammer Montessori program from Galarza Elementary into the Gardner building — the same campus being proposed for closure as a neighborhood school.
The school board is scheduled to vote on March 26.
The Saturday Hearing
On Saturday, March 21, the San Jose Unified school board held a public hearing on the proposed closures. The room was packed. Roughly 60 people spoke — parents, students, teachers, and neighborhood residents. The overwhelming majority demanded the closures be stopped.
Ethan Dutra, an 11-year-old fifth-grader at Gardner Elementary, addressed the board. He graduates in a few months, but his younger sister is in first grade. Dutra told the board that closing the school would cause serious emotional harm to younger children. He described Gardner as a tight-knit community that the district is about to tear apart.
One parent told the board bluntly: we’re tired of waiting for you to give us equity. Another San Jose resident called the closures a last resort and demanded a no vote.
Charter School Money and the Question of Trust
Weeks before the vote, a new layer emerged. Parents discovered in campaign finance filings that school board president José Magaña received more than $60,000 in donations from charter school–aligned organizations across his 2018 and 2022 campaigns.
$16,000 came from Democrats for Education Reform, a political group that promotes charter schools. Thousands more came from Leadership for Educational Equity, which according to ProPublica donates to pro-charter candidates. A third major donor was the Charter Public Schools Political Action Committee.
Magaña declined to be interviewed. Through the district’s communications office, he said there is no conflict of interest and dismissed accusations that the closure process is being driven by charter school interests as untrue.
Parents were unconvinced. Laura Cain, a district parent, called the donations egregious and demanded the process start over. Another board member, Nicole Gribstad, said publicly that the donations make the situation even less transparent. Gribstad had already opposed the proposed closures.
The central question from parents: what happens to the campuses after they close? Will they be sold to charter schools? Magaña’s response: there are no plans for the buildings yet.
This Isn’t Just San Jose Unified
School closures are a South Bay–wide problem. Over the past two years, San Jose–area districts have closed or consolidated more than a dozen campuses.
In December 2024, the Alum Rock Union School District in East San Jose voted unanimously to close six schools and merge three others. The district was on the brink of insolvency — facing a $20 million budget deficit. Enrollment had fallen from 16,000 in the early 2000s to 7,300. Four elementary schools and two middle schools shut their doors by fall 2025: Sylvia Cassell, Horace Cureton, A.J. Dorsa, Donald Meyer Elementary, Joseph George Middle School, and Renaissance Academy at Fischer.
In February 2025, the Franklin-McKinley School District closed three schools — Los Arboles Literacy & Technology Academy, Ramblewood Elementary, and McKinley Elementary. The reasons were the same: declining enrollment and a $23 million deficit after federal COVID relief funds ran out.
The Berryessa Union School District closed three campuses in 2024.
In total, 12 schools have closed across three San Jose districts in two years. If San Jose Unified approves its plan on March 26, the count rises to 17.
Why Children Are Leaving Silicon Valley Schools
Declining enrollment is a statewide trend, but in San Jose the drop is especially sharp. There are three main drivers. Birth rates across the Bay Area are falling. Families are leaving — the cost of living in Silicon Valley is pushing out households with children. And some students are transferring to charter schools, which draw public funding away from traditional districts.
Each student represents money from the state budget. Fewer students means fewer teachers, fewer counselors, fewer school nurses. When an elementary school built for 500 students has only 200 enrolled, the building still operates, the utilities still run, the maintenance still costs — nearly as much as it would at full capacity.
Parents and some education analysts point to an important distinction. Unlike Alum Rock, San Jose Unified insists the closures are not driven by a financial crisis. The district cites educational quality — arguing that small schools cannot deliver a full program. Parents counter that San Jose Unified’s funding formula works differently from neighboring districts, and that losing students doesn’t hit its budget as hard.
Opponents of the closures also cite the district’s own numbers: even after shutting five schools, only 36% of elementary students would end up in an “ideal” school by Schools of Tomorrow standards. Committee member Manjusha Gangadharan, a parent from Simonds Elementary, put it plainly: at that rate, many schools will remain under-enrolled, and the district will have to close more in a couple of years.
What Comes Next
On March 26, the San Jose Unified school board will vote on the committee’s recommendation. The vote was originally scheduled for March 12 but was postponed by two weeks — officially for additional discussion. The San Jose Teachers Association reached an agreement with the district: no teacher or staff member will lose their job due to consolidation. Students from closed schools will receive priority placement at other campuses. The district has promised free transportation for families living more than a mile and a half from their new school, along with three hours of free after-school programming.
If the plan is approved, schools on the closure list will receive double funding through the end of this academic year — for transition costs. Receiving schools will get double funding in 2026–27 to support the integration of incoming students. The district has not explained where that money will come from.