Trustee Guzman’s May 8 Office Hours: LCAP, Name Change and a Library Suggestion
Field Notes: Trustee Guzman's Office Hours, May 8, 2026
On Friday, May 8, Sonoma Schools Alliance attended Trustee Gerardo Guzman's office hours at the Flowery Elementary School library. The hour covered three things that matter ahead of the June 18 LCAP vote and the budget vote that follows it: the blank funding columns still sitting in the district's draft LCAP, the reasoning behind renaming Altimira Middle School, and a staffing counter-proposal that SVUSD librarians have developed from their own usage data. What follows is a record of what was asked and what was answered.
The LCAP funding columns and the June 18 vote
Sonoma Schools Alliance founder Leigh Cavalier asked Trustee Guzman a direct question: if the funding columns in the LCAP are still blank on June 18, would he support a motion to delay LCAP adoption until the district provides actual planned expenditures for every action?
Guzman characterized the blank funding columns and the $0.00 amounts in the draft as a timing issue, suggesting the numbers would be filled in later in the process.
That answer does not hold up against the record. In the previous year's LCAP, the same pattern appeared: contributing action expenditures were reported as $0 against budgeted amounts, which means money that was supposed to be spent on services for high-needs students was not, in fact, spent. This is not a one-year timing issue. It is a pattern recurring across multiple LCAP cycles, and it is the reason the question of delaying adoption is on the table at all.
Guzman took notes on the question, and Sonoma Schools Alliance expects he will follow up.
A second question went unanswered: will the draft be complete before the public hearing? If community members do not have complete information, how are they expected to comment meaningfully on a plan they cannot evaluate? No specific answer was recorded.
Amendments, and whether public support would move them
Ms. Cavalier also asked what specific contributing actions or layoff positions Guzman would consider proposing amendments or rescissions on at the June 18 LCAP vote, or at the budget vote that follows, and whether visible public support behind those amendments would help him move them.
Guzman did not directly answer the question about whether visible public support would help. On the first part, he said he hopes all of the information will be available in time for the vote, but he did not identify any specific actions or positions he would propose amending. Part of this discussion was picked up later when the librarian staffing proposal came up.
The Altimira Middle School renaming
A Flowery Elementary parent asked why the name change was warranted, saying she did not understand the reasoning.
Guzman explained that Adele Harrison Middle School is no longer operating as a junior high. With Adele Harrison and Altimira consolidating onto one middle school site, giving the consolidated school a new name would help establish a new identity and bring students from both former campuses together under one roof. The wolf mascot and logo will be retained.
Ms. Cavalier asked what the second naming option was, since Superintendent Sutter referenced two options at the May 4 board meeting but did not state the second one publicly. Guzman said the only other option considered was keeping the existing name, Altimira. At that May 4 meeting, the board voted to rename the school Sonoma Valley Middle School.
Two reasons for the change were documented at the meeting. First, to build togetherness and a shared identity for students transitioning from both former campuses to the consolidated school. Second, the documented history of Father José Altimira, the Franciscan missionary who founded Mission San Francisco Solano in Sonoma in 1823. Altimira founded and ran the mission using the forced labor of Native people relocated from other missions, and contemporary accounts describe corporal punishment, including flogging, for disobedience or attempted escape. Like the California mission system as a whole, his mission subjected indigenous people to coerced religious conversion and to conditions that brought widespread death, primarily from disease. Altimira's administration was considered harsh even by the standards of the time, and in 1826 a neophyte uprising in protest of mission conditions burned mission buildings.
The parent observed that her own children did not know why the name was being changed, because the district has not communicated the reasoning to students. Sonoma Schools Alliance's position is straightforward: students would understand the reasoning if it were communicated honestly. The history is the history. Telling students the truth about why a school is being renamed is a stronger position than asking them to accept the change without explanation.
Library cuts and a counter-proposal from the district's librarians
The Flowery Elementary parent also stated that the librarian layoffs and the planned reduction in library hours are harmful to students. Elementary libraries are where children learn to read and get excited about reading, and cutting elementary library services contradicts the district's stated literacy goals.
A Flowery Elementary librarian then described a proposal that SVUSD librarians have discussed collectively across the district. It is grounded in actual usage data and offers a different approach to the staffing reductions currently before the board.
The librarians' findings are these. The high school and middle school libraries are not used in the traditional library sense. The district's lowest checkout rates are at the high school and middle school libraries. Students at the secondary level are not brought into the library by their teachers for library science instruction. Those libraries function more as social and homework spaces, with occasional respite use, rather than as library science learning environments.
The proposal is to increase staffing at the elementary level. Each of the three remaining elementary schools, Flowery, El Verano, and Sassarini, would have a librarian on site four days per week, all day long, with library service maintained at its current level. Librarian staffing at the high school and middle school, where the libraries are not being used as libraries, would be reduced or eliminated. This redistribution would create equity across the three elementary schools and direct staffing where it produces measurable literacy outcomes for the youngest readers.
Guzman took notes on the proposal and indicated he may bring it up at the next board meeting. The proposal needs to be raised and considered before the budget vote that finalizes whether the February 2026 pink slips become permanent or are rescinded.
What Guzman took on notice
Two items from this meeting are now in Guzman's notes for follow-up before the June 18 LCAP vote and the budget vote that follows.
The first is Cavalier's question about whether he would support a motion to delay LCAP adoption if the funding columns are still blank on June 18, with the documented context that the same pattern appeared in the previous year's LCAP.
The second is the librarians' counter-proposal on staffing redistribution, with the request that it be raised at a board meeting before the budget vote that finalizes the layoffs.
Demographic context
For reference in any follow-up correspondence with Trustee Guzman or other officials, the current verified demographic figures for SVUSD are worth keeping on hand. The district is 67.7 percent Hispanic or Latino district-wide, per U.S. News Education citing government data for the 2021-22 through 2023-24 school years. The Sonoma Valley Sun editorial of October 2, 2025 corroborates this, putting the figure at over 66 percent. At Flowery Elementary specifically, Hispanic enrollment is approximately 78 percent. Sources for both figures are publicly available and citable.
Documented by Leigh Cavalier, Sonoma Schools Alliance, May 8, 2026
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