Earlier this month, Arturo Valentin learned that his daughter’s school, Santa Barbara Community Academy, would be getting a new principal next year. But he was shocked to find out the principal would be splitting his time with another school and what this means for the future of SBCA.
The board of the Santa Barbara Unified School District last Tuesday voted to appoint Bradley Brock as the new principal of SBCA while he continues to serve as principal of La Cumbre Junior High School, which shares a campus with SBCA. The board also approved hiring an additional assistant principal at SBCA to help with the transition.
SBCA is an elementary “school of choice,” meaning it is open to anyone living within the boundaries of SBUSD.
Around 20 SBCA parents and students rallied outside the district’s administration building ahead of the meeting with signs reading “Save SBCA” and “SBCA deserves a full time principal.”
Valentin was disappointed with the outcome. As a parent, he felt like he wasn’t given enough time or consideration about who would replace Suzette McCormick, the current SBCA principal who plans to retire after this school year.
“Our district is showing La Cumbre and SBCA families that their students do not deserve as much administrative support as other schools,” said Kendall Stevens, a La Cumbre teacher, at the last board meeting. “This feels especially concerning, given the great disparity among the student populations of the four junior highs.”
Stevens said that the decision to cut support from La Cumbre, the “highest-need junior high,” directly contradicts SBUSD’s values of equity.
Roughly 86% of students at both SBCA and La Cumbre are considered socioeconomically disadvantaged, according to reports from the California Department of Education.
Valentin feels similarly to Stevens: they should be receiving more support from the district, not less.
“We didn’t know anything until we asked the superintendent personally,” Valentin said about the new principal. “If we share a principal, we want them to explain to us how it’s going to work, because we are not doing very well, so we’re going to have less support. So, it doesn’t seem logical.”
York Shingle, president of the Santa Barbara Teachers Association, used to teach at La Cumbre when its principal, Jo Ann Caines, died in 2018, leaving the school with no full-time principal for a year.
“It did not work,” Shingle said. “Unfortunately, I think that’s what both sites are going to be going through next year. Because of our pushing, the district found an assistant principal for SBCA, but it’s still not ideal. It speaks to the reactionary response that our district regularly has instead of being proactive about things.”
Over the past month, Valentin and other SBCA parents met with SBUSD cabinet members and Superintendent Hilda Maldonado, who gave a presentation on the school’s declining enrollment—an overall trend across SBUSD schools—and the district’s intent to not seek a full-time principal.
SBCA’s enrollment is projected to drop from 208 to 171 students for the upcoming school year, according to the district.
Additionally, due to declining enrollment, the fate of the school still hangs in the air.
The district ultimately plans to make a long-term decision about SBCA’s future in the fall or winter, which was shared with SBCA parents around the same time as the news about its principal.
Maldonado, however, explicitly stated both in emails to SBCA parents and at the most recent board meeting that the district does not plan to close the school for the upcoming 2026-2027 year.
Some parents, however, remain uncertain about the future. They believe that the district eventually closing down SBCA is not entirely off the table.
“There are no plans to close SBCA for next year,” Maldonado told one parent at the board meeting who urged the district to not close the school.
Ed Zuchelli, the district’s spokesman, said the long-term decision will be a “thorough process” consisting of data analysis, discussion with parents and staff and ultimately, board approval.
As part of that process, the district is considering consolidating two small elementary schools, combining SBCA and La Cumbre to create a TK-8 school or keeping a single principal for both schools.
“They’re just using technical words, saying, ‘the next cycle, 2026-2027, you’re going to be open,’” Valentin said. “But for the 2027-2028 [school year], they say, ‘oh, we need to discuss that.’”
Shingle said it was inappropriate of the district to share the news about the principal at the same time as “we might close your school after a year.”
“It is belittling to the parents and the community,” Shingle said.
