Hernandez: Alum Rock Union School District needs state oversight

Every kid deserves a strong, stable public school, but I learned early on that not every kid gets one.

I grew up in East San Jose, a resilient community that cherishes education and faces impossible choices. Like many families, my family faced either sending me to a failing neighborhood school or seek better. That led me to KIPP, one of the few schools in East San Jose that offered academic-stability without political infighting and financial mismanagement.

But not everybody is as fortunate. Alum Rock is home to countless friends, family and siblings with enormous potential, but too many still lack access to the opportunities they deserve. Families here want to believe in their education system, but you can only believe for so long until it fails you.

Weeks ago, the Alum Rock Union School District board of trustees fired another superintendent with no public guidance or real explanation, and our kids are now paying the price.

It’s easy to blame families for seeking alternatives, but wanting your child to feel safe, seen and supported isn’t culpable. What’s culpable is a system that makes those things feel out of reach. We must make our district schools strong enough so families choose them freely, not out of desperation.

Here’s what the public data shows according to Ed Data.

In 2023, Los Altos Elementary School District reported about $26,000 per student in revenue, while Alum Rock Union School District came in just under at $25,000.

But look more closely. Nearly $18,037 of Los Altos’s funding per student came from local property taxes. In Alum Rock, it was only about $3,656, leaving it reliant on $12,222 in state-aid compared to Los Altos’s $450 figure. Yet Los Altos still ends up ahead, raising another $5,656 per student through local fundraising, while in Alum Rock, that figure is less than half at $2,480.

And only one of those school districts — Alum Rock — is running a $20.8 million deficit.

As members of this community, we know where that disparity shows up. It shows up in every corner of the student experience with fewer counselors, older textbooks and less access to the resources that make school feel alive.

Our students are placed at a disadvantage because we fund schools in a way that sneakily rewards wealthy communities and neglects marginalized ones. Despite a court ruling this unconstitutional more than 50 years ago, a child’s future is still decided by where they reside.

Even worse, when local leaders betray our kids with corruption and broken trust, we can’t afford inactivity. We must apply our federalist principles and allow the state to clean up the mess to ensure every dollar is allocated to classrooms where it belongs. The state must now take over Alum Rock with expert education recovery teams running the district and replacing the board until public trust is restored. Only then will we stabilize leadership, make spending fully transparent and rebuild public confidence.

But oversight alone isn’t enough, it’s time we addressed a number of problems.

• Reform California’s Local Control Funding Formula to reflect the true cost of educating high-need students
• Pass a statewide bond to rebuild and modernize our high-need schools
• Set clear processes for leadership changes
• Impose term limits on school board members

I was lucky. I had one good shot at a stable education, and I made it count. But I was never meant to be the exception.

Thousands of students in East San Jose are just as smart, just as driven and just as worthy of a stable, well-funded public education. We simply can’t ask our kids to thrive in schools that are barely functioning.

We know what our kids are capable of. Now, we need a school system worthy of them.

Alfredo Hernandez is a Harvard student from East San Jose and the first in their family to attend college. He is also a San Jose policy advocate who co-wrote a homelessness ordinance while in high school, becoming the youngest individual in city history to do so.