（Archived, 9/24/2023)
On Tuesday, September 19th, the Fremont Union High School District (FUHSD) held its 2nd pre-map public meeting. This may have been the first time since the topic of Trustee Areas was discussed that quite a few parents from areas other than North Sunnyvale attended the meeting to speak. Previously, only North Sunnyvale speakers made public comments at FUHSD Board meetings regarding Truestee Areas. Even in this meeting, they were still the majority of public speakers.
To note that FUHSD is much better funded than the K-8 Cupertino Union School District (CUSD), but it lags far behind in terms of operational transparency. Many other schoool districts post their meeting video records online. However, FUHSD still doesn’t have meeting videos, making it difficult for people who are trying to understand what happened in the school district meetings 1–2 years ago.
Hope more community members can continue to write to the Superintendent and the FUHSD School Board, requesting that the video of school district meetings should be posted and the transparency of the school district can be improved. Without transparency, it will be difficult for more people to keep a watch on school district affairs and protect our own interests.
This meeting showed how much pressure FUHSD is under from North Sunnyvale. In addition to ordinary residents, SEE (Sunnyvale Equity in Education) leaders, the Sunnyvale School District (SSD) board members, and Sunnyvale City Councilmembers came to show their support. In comparison, from other areas, there were almost only online speakers. Our influence on the board is far behind that of the North Sunnyvale people.
The North Sunnyvale residents and interest groups are mainly asking for two things:
- There is a high proportion of Hispanics in the North Sunnyvale area, who are under-represented in the school district. They believe that a Hispanic school board seat must be allocated to the North next year to represent the 11% of the FUHSD population that is Hispanic. They feel their group is underprivileged and needs representation. SEE, the North Sunnyvale organization, hopes to launch two candidates in 2024: Allison Joe, the leader of the SEE organization who lives in central Sunnyvale, and a Hispanic candidate in North Sunnyvale.
2. Parents from North Sunnyvale complained about how far Fremontthe High School is from their homes and, how inconvenient it iswas to go to school everyday. They demanded the reopening of a new high school — Sunnyvale High. However, currently there are not enough students in North Sunnyvale to form a new high school, and they are unwilling to wait to see if the population will grow large enough to reopen Sunnyvale High. Therefore, they have repeatedly cited the sharp decline in the population of Monta Vista High School and Lynbrook High School. Although they have not explicitly asked to close other schools, this is a clear attack on Monta Vista and Lynbrook.
To be clear, there are no school district board members in West San Jose, Saratoga, or Santa Clara. Except for North Sunnyvale, the people in many areas are also under-represented. In addition, there are also many working-class or even low income people in southern FUHSD. Many tenant families cannot afford to buy a house and can only rent a house to go to FUHSD schools. f schools are closed, it will also make it difficult for many low-income children in other areas to commute to other schools every day.
Until recently, only North Sunnyvale was putting pressure on FUHSD. When North Sunnyvale residents insisted that FUHSD set up a committee to collect “public opinion” and draw districts, the superintendent said right away that it had been decided, and that it would set up a Superintendent Committee (CTAD) to address the Trustee Area boundary map issue. The superintendent also emphasized that this Committee is different from the current CAC established by FUHSD several years ago to solve the school enrollment decline issue. In the past, the CAC was composed of five parents from each high school. The principle received balanced public opinions from different areas. The superintendent stated that this new committee, CTAD, will invite Sunnyvale community leaders to help FUHSD collect public input and stated that the League of Women Voters of California (LWVC) organization will help lead the division of school districts
Many community members said that it is enough to tell the different positions of current FUHSD school board members even after viewing one board meeting on September 19th.
(1) Naomi Nakano is clearly working in the interests of North Sunnyvale. She is the most northerly resident among the current school committee members. Though living in the Homestead High area, her middle school is Sunnyvale Middle, same as Allison Joe.
(2) Rosa Kim lives in the HHS area at the south end of Sunnyvale, and has been in the CUSD school district for elementary and middle school. In public, she at least tries in the HHS area at the south end of Sunnyvale, and has been in the CUSD school district for elementary and middle school.
(3) Stanley Kou was just elected last year and lives in the Cupertino High area in east Cupertino. His opinion seems the closest to the interests of the residents of Cupertino and West San Jose. He reminded the public that dividing Trustee Areas based on school enrollment areas cannot achieve the legally required population average in each area. However, with a few adjustments, school attendance areas can help serve as a more equitable guide to boundary lines also proposed that other community organizations outside of the several organizations actively involved in the Trustee Areas matters in the past be considered for the CTAD. He also mentioned that the previous CAC performed very well in solving the problem of Lynbrook’s enrollment decline issue. Kou hopes the CTAD can learn from the parent-led CAC.
(4) Jeff Moe has the longest tenure of any FUHSD board member. He resides in the Monta Vista area in west Cupertino. It appears that Moe still wants to run for re-election in 2024. Moe, who is familiar with the operations of the school district, is the ONLY ONE who asked for the possibility of forming a “Board Committee” after hearing that the CTAD for Trustee Area boundary drawing is a “Superintendent Committee”. Here, Jeff tactfully pointed out the difference between the Superintendent Committee and Board Committee. Superintendent Committee meetings only need to report to the superintendent. The meetings are all closed-door meetings, and the public has no visibility into them. Even the selection of Superintendent Committee members can be determined solely by the superintendent, without informing the board. Conversely, a Board Committee is responsible to the school board, publicly- elected officials. It must hold public meetings and invite the community members to participate and speak. Its report and recommendations are also public information. For high school parents from other areas than north Sunnyvale, we got involved too late and have lost the opportunity to seize a majority on the committee, so a board committee would clearly be more beneficial to us.
(5) Rod Sinks served as a Cupertino City Council member for two terms in the past and has close ties with Hung Wei, the current mayor of Cupertino City. Sinks showed impatience when listening to the speakers from Cupertino and West San Jose. He pointed out that the speakers’ demands to use the school district as a baseline to draw districts were “uninformed” and “uneducated”. His position mirrors Hung Wei’s that the people who are protesting are just messing around and that all those “trouble-makers” should receive “proper education.” During the board meeting, he also asserted that voters should trust their elected officials to make the best decisions for them, and that the switch to Trustee Areas will have no impact on our lives. This tone left many Cupertino attendees feeling like Sinks had sided with the North Sunnyvale organization. Hung Wei has already publicly endorsed Sunnyvale’s Allison Joe to run for FUHSD Board next year.
In addition, many readers said they did not understand the difference between North Sunnyvale’s demands for zoning and the demands for zoning by those in other areas described in the previous article (Chinese version and English Version) Here is some more detailed analysis and explanation.
The map below shows the current attendance areas for the five high schools: F — Fremont High, H — Homestead High, C — Cupertino High, M — Monta Vista High, L — Lynbrook High
Three colored circles mark the locations of the three school board members elected last year: N — Naomi Nakano, R — Rosa Kim, S — Stanley Kou.
Some have asked “Why should Cupertino residents care?” There are only two FUHSD Board seats up for election next year. The current two incumbents, Jeff Moe and Rod Sinks, are both in the Monta Vista area. The current two incumbents, Jeff Moe and Rod Sinks, are both in the Monta Vista area.
Refer to the school map below, in order to maximize the interests of North Sunnyvale and obtain Naomi and Rosa’s North Sunnyvale’s strategy is to push the Sunnyvale Trustee Area boundaries as far south as possible to accomodate the two school board members of South Sunnyvale, Naomi and Rosa. This way, the Sunnyvale trustee area can occupy part of Cupertino and even West San Jose and Saratoga. Since Stanley lives in the southeast corner of the FUHSD, his area can be kept unchanged.
Among the candidates supported by the North Sunnyvale organization, one has been identified as Allison Joe (marked by a red circle “A”) who lives in central Sunnyvale, and the other is undecided (living in far North). It can be clearly seen that if A, N, and R live very close to each other. Many parents suspect that Naomi and Rosa are attempting to draw the map based on their own places of residence, in order to give Sunnyvale board members more power. Otherwise, if the map drawing was based on enrollment area, the three of them (Allison, Naomi and Rosa) will definitely not be able to co-exist.
If Cupertino, West San Jose, and Saratoga residents want to retain their fair share of voting power, they must ensure their trustee area boundaries do not include Sunnyvale
There is a very active WhatsApp group (Save FUHSD High Schools) established already https://chat.whatsapp.com/LSP6KO0MXog7Y7ouDiGZsz, which includes parents of all ethnic groups who are concerned about this high school district Trustee Area issue. Someone in it has posted a preliminary proposed boundary map (pictured below) as a counter to the North Sunnyvale proposal.
We hope more people can write to the board and use this map as a basis to draw the Trustee Area boundaries. Rod Sinks called the residents advocating for boundaries based on school enrollment map “uninformed and un-educated”. Yes, according to the law, the population of the five Trustee Areas must be evenly divided, but the law does not say that school districts cannot use the enrollment area as a baseline. We know that the above preliminary map cannot divide the school district population evenly into the five districts, but it is only the first step. On this basis, we can continue to negotiate and adjust the boundary to achieve fair boundaries with an even population, comply with the laws of constituency demarcation
Because people in other areas except North Sunnyvale participated very late in the matter, time is particularly urgent for us now. Please be sure to mobilize your friends and neighbors to act immediately. It is important to race against time. Below is the email of our school district’s Superintendent and School Board members, as well as a summary of the key points of the letter. Hope everyone will pick some key points to draft on their own and send a letter to the school district every few days. In October, formal discussions on the constituency map will begin. Next meeting will be Oct. 17th.
Email of the Superintendent and School Board Trustees:
graham_clark@fuhsd.org, rosa_kim@fuhsd.org, jeff_moe@fuhsd.org, naomi_nakano-matsumoto@fuhsd.org, stanley_kou@fuhsd.org, rod_sinks@fuhsd.org
Key Points：
- Please keep FUHSD meeting video record to promote transparency
- Please consider to let more parents from the five current high schools to join the CTAD to guarantee fairness. CTAD should be a board committee, instead of superintendent committee, with public meetings. Even if it cannot be switched to a board committee, it should report meeting summaries to FUHSD board in public meeting.
- attach the above map and ask FUHSD school board to use it as the baseline of Trustee Area boundary map. We know it needs fine tune to make all 5 voting areas have equal populations. It can still work as a good reference to draw the Trustee Area boundary.
2