Protesters Flood SCUSD Meeting to Contest Cuts

Update: A.M. Winn Elementary School's fate won't be decided until the school board's next meeting on March 1. Click here for more details.

Thursday's Sacramento City Unified School District board meeting hadn't even started yet, and it was already clear what the mood of the evening would be.

Hundreds of protestors circled the district's headquarters in Sacramento prior to the meeting to protest proposed cuts to extra-curricular activities and the possible closure of three schools.

A.M. Winn Elementary School, which is just east of Rosemont, could be closed. Its students would then be split between Abraham Lincoln Elementary School in Rancho Cordova and James W. Marshall Elementary School in Rosemont. 

Matt Phillips, the site director of START at the school, said many children would have to cross busy streets like Routier Road in order to walk to a school other than A.M. Winn.

"It's an extremely dangerous street," Phillips said.

Angela Hopkins, who works in the kitchen at the Rancho Cordova elementary school, said the process is "getting really ridiculous."

The school district's board decided in December it would not close the school, then put the potential closures back on the table for Thursday's meeting.

Rancho Cordova Vice Mayor Linda Budge said that city has been through school closures before, when the Folsom Cordova Unified School District shuttered two elementary schools.

"It would have a devastating effect," Budge said of the proposed closure. "Schools are the heart of community life. If you take away that school you stab at the heart of that community."

Budge said the Rancho Cordova City Council passed a resolution voicing its opposition to the proposed closure.

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Check back for more updates throughout the evening.