Families of San Francisco's Sutro Elementary rally for school amid proposed closures
SAN FRANCISCO – Families at more than a dozen San Francisco Unified Public Schools are scrambling after finding out their school is on the closure list. One of those schools is Sutro Elementary.
Sunday morning dozens of Sutro families got up early to rally for their school. They held up signs and chanted at the Clement Street Farmer's Market.
The mother of two Sutro students, Kaitlin Solimine, says a week ago she didn't think she would be here.
"None of us knew," Solimine said. "No one knew."
Solimine's life has been turned upside down. She stopped working to focus on this issue and helped start the group Keep Surto Open.
She didn't think Sutro was at risk of closing until she got the list on Tuesday. Now she's doing everything she can to fight for the school and for her children's education.
"My children run out of the house," said Solimine about how excited her kids are to go to Sutro every day. "My son was begging us because we weren't fast enough."
While she worries about her own children's education, she gets emotional when she thinks about all the other families who will be impacted by the closure as well.
"These are many groups of people that come from very different walks of life, we are 60% low income," said Solimine referring to the types of families that attend Sutro.
The school offers a Cantonese bi-literacy program as well as a focus on the Common Core State Standards.
It's one of the reasons Krystal Ejanda has sent her two children to this school, even though there are four other schools closer to her home.
"Usually when you think of low income and academically strong it's really difficult to pair together but Sutro is doing that," Ejanda said.
Ejanda also works with families who are in the process of applying for schools.
"The district has put us in a really, really challenging position because school applications are coming up," Ejanda said about working with people interested in the school. "We're on a potential closure list so now people are like, should I not even bother?"
If people don't apply to join the school, she believes it could give the district more ammunition to close it.
But they're not giving up yet and Solimine says they're coming together to fight.
"Besides being very exhausting this has been a very, very rewarding moment for our community because it just proves that we really are as strong as I knew we were," Solimine said.
The parents say they will continue to protest and dig into the data behind the closure.
Superintendent Matt Wayne will also meet with Sutro families on Wednesday.