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Approximately 20 parents and other family members of students at Quail Run Elementary School gathered at last week’s school board meeting to raise concerns about increasingly strained resources at the well-attended San Ramon school, including the imminent departure of its principal.
Principal Bassant Abdelrahman’s resignation effective June 10 was approved by the board that evening as part of the certificated personnel changes that are a regular part of its consent agenda.
The move marks the end of a two-year tenure for Abdelrahman at the helm of Quail Run, having taken the reins from its longtime former principal Mimi Quan upon her retirement at the end of the 2022-23 school year.
According to Quail Run community members who gathered at the district headquarters March 10, Abdelrahman’s pending departure is also a sign of larger issues.
That includes the lack of an assistant principal position, with other resources stretched increasingly thin as the elementary school grapples with a high student population in San Ramon’s growing Dougherty Valley neighborhood amid district-wide budget cuts spurred in part by declining enrollment at SRVUSD overall.
“Quail Run has been operating without an assistant principal for more than a year, and our current principal will be leaving us at the end of the school year,” Quail Run parent May Du said in a public comment at the March 10 board meeting. “This means that we will have three different principals during a four-year span. That’s another signal that burnout is real, creating further instability for our community and students.”
“So tonight, we are respectfully asking for the district to restore an assistant principal position at Quail Run for the upcoming school year,” she continued. “This is not about comparing schools or diminishing the needs of others. It is about ensuring that the largest elementary school in our district, with the highest percentage of low-income students, has the leadership structure required to support students, teachers, and families.”
Superintendent CJ Cammack thanked the group for their attendance later in the evening, noting that he had been in touch with some of them ahead of the meeting and was “looking forward to continuing that conversation.”
That conversation is set to be about more than restoring the assistant principal position at Quail Run that was axed as part of the $26 million budget reduction plan that was approved by the district last year, with the effects of those cuts resounding throughout the district in the current school year.
The assistant principal position was just one of several “key resources” that has been absent in the current school year, according to parent and school volunteer Gabi Lazar, including front office staff and counselors.
“These cuts have resulted in a level of strain that we can no longer sustain,” Lazar said at last week’s board meeting.
In addition to the size of the student population, Lazar and other speakers that evening pointed to Title I federal funding that is intended to support low-income students and address income-driven achievement gaps.
“Without adequate administrative support, disciplinary responsibilities are often pushed back onto teachers,” Lazar said. “Students are forced to sit in the front office for extended periods, taking away from their learning time, and families have reported delays in important meetings, including IEP conferences, because they simply do not have enough administrative capacity.”
Shawna Feaster, a Quail Run parent and parliamentarian for its school site council, emphasized the purpose of Title I funding and Quail Run’s responsibilities as a site receiving that funding.Â
“We cannot claim to be closing these gaps if we are refusing to provide the necessary boots on the ground for the very campus that requires the most intervention,” Feaster said. “Providing fewer resources to the schools with the highest need is the definition of inequity.”
Feaster added that Quail Run is not the only school in the district in need of resources, and said that the group was not begrudging extra staffing at other sites.
“While those students absolutely deserve those resources and support, we must ask ourselves, does one disenfranchised group take precedent over another? Why is our high population of socioeconomically disadvantaged students being treated as secondary priority?” Feaster said.
As a former school counselor, Feaster said that she had firsthand experience with the impacts on students that can come from insufficient administrative resources, including a deprioritization of academics and a drop in staff morale.
“We are welcoming a new school principal next year, to start their tenure without an assistant principal is a recipe for burnout,” Feaster said. “You are doing a disservice to our students’ well-being. Quail Run deserves equity. I am asking the board as our elected officials to honor the spirit of the Title I law, and the principles of this very school district.”
The district has not yet announced Abdelrahman’s successor as principal at Quail Run. Applications for the position opened on Feb. 26 and closed on March 13.
Editor’s note: A previous version of this story mischaracterized Quail Run’s Title I status. The San Ramon Valley Unified School District has no Title I schools. Embarcadero Media regrets the error.
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